Dear All,
It appears that recently there are viruses that are spread through email ATTACHMENTS in MS Word or Excel. These viruses (Melissa and Papa) are activated when you open the attachment, and send 50 emails to dozens of peoples listed in your address book, which eventually can bog down your server. The effect of these viruses is the same as that caused by some of you who chain-forwarded the virus hoax.
I'd maintained that any warning that a virus would be activated once you read a certain email is very likely a hoax. That's still true as until today I've known of no one being sent "Pen Pals" or "Good News" and having his/her hard-drive wiped out simply because he/she reads the email.
Virus Hoaxes
Please ignore any messages regarding these supposed "viruses" and do not pass on any messages about them. Passing on messages about these hoaxes only serves to further propagate them.
3b Trojan (alias PKZIP Virus)
AOL4Free Virus Hoax
AOL Year 2000 Update Hoax
Baby New Year Virus Hoax
Bad Times Hoax
Blue Mountain Virus Hoax
BUDDYLST.ZIP
BUDSAVER.EXE
Budweiser Hoax
Dear Friends Hoax
Death69
Deeyenda
E-Flu
FatCat Virus Hoax
Free Money
Get More Money Hoax
Ghost
Good Times
Guts to Say Jesus Hoax
Hacky Birthday Virus Hoax
Hairy Palms Virus Hoax
Irina
Join the Crew
Londhouse Virus Hoax
Microsoft Virus Hoax
Millenium Time Bomb
Norton anti - virus v5 Hoax
Penpal Greetings
Red Alert
Returned or Unable to Deliver
Teletubbies
Time Bomb
Very Cool
Win a Holiday
World Domination Hoax
Yellow Teletubbies
News about Melissa & Papa Virus
Melissa Virus Gets Traced To Its Source
(03/30/99, 5:23 p.m. ET)
By Amy K. Larsen, InformationWeek
Melissa, the e-mail-borne virus carrying the header "Important Message," has been traced to its roots.
Newsgroup-sniffing software from security vendor Network Associates discovered where the virus was first posted: at the alt.sex newsgroup. A search of the file spotted an origin time close to the time it was
published on the newsgroup.
Network Associates researchers at the vendor's Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team (AVERT) lab identified an AOL user with the moniker "Sky Roket" as the person who first posted the virus. The FBI is searching for this person.
The Melissa virus, which sends 50 infected e-mail messages with a list of pornographic sites to recipients named in the end user's address book, first surfaced late Friday.
Late Monday, the inevitable follow-on to the Melissa virus made its first appearance. Named Papa, this new Excel virus works in a similar way to the Melissa bug. Papa arrives via e-mail, claiming to be sent by "all.net" or "Fred Cohen" in the end user's inbox, and then replicates, mailing itself to the first 60 users in the address book.
Experts said the viruses have different authors, but similar patterns, which should make it easier to come up with an antidote for a copycat bug.
Sal Viveros, group marketing manager for antivirus products at Network Associates, said he estimates millions of computers have been infected by the original Melissa virus.
Anwar Hasim