[ILUG] Email Virus

[Edwards, Benjamin ()]

[from what I can gather this one is for real]

NEW EMAIL COMPUTER VIRUS DISCOVERED
A fast-spreading computer virus with the potential to breach security
systems has been discovered by experts at a Pittsburgh University.
 FULL STORY: 
http://newsworld.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/go.pl?1999/03/28/computer990328

New email computer virus discovered _
WebPosted Sun Mar 28 21:27:24 1999 
PITTSBURGH - A fast-spreading computer virus with the potential to breach 
security systems has been discovered by experts at a Pittsburgh University. 
INDEPTH:{HYPERLINK"/news/indepth/y2k/"}Y2K
The computer team says the "Melissa macro", can allow documents to be
e-mailed 
to other people without warning. 

The virus doesn't hurt computers themselves. Instead, it overloads network 
systems by going into the address book of the computer's user and e-mailing 
itself to 50 addresses. Eventually, the overloaded systems must be shut
down. 
You'll know you've caught the virus if you receive an email with a subject
line 
"Important message from..." followed by the name of the person whose
computer 
address book provided the recipient's e-mail address. 
That is followed by the message: "Here is that document you asked for ...
don't 
show it to anyone else". A massive 40K document called list.doc is attached.

The document is a list of pornography sites. 

When the recipient opens the attachment, the virus is unleashed. It then
seeks 
out 50 addresses in the recipient's address book, sends itself off, and the 
whole process begins again. 

It is thought the virus attacks computers loaded with Microsoft's
widely-used 
Word 97 or Word 2000 programs, though other sources say the email programs
most 
likely to be affected are Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. 
Microsoft engineers are trying to come up with an antidote.