>There is a new nasty going around called GONER and our business was >seriously hit yesterday afternoon at 17:30. >If you get any emails where the subject is 'Hi' then immediately delete >them. >If you run M$ Lookout or Lookout Express, make sure you turn your preview >pane off as this is enough to infect you. > >The virus was discovered in the wild yesterday afternoon, our email scanner >was being updated as soon as the new data file was made available and we got >'hit' slap bang in the middle of the update - how's that for bad timing ? This is all part of the stupid idea of having HTML based emails. They bloat the transmitted code up and provide convenient vehicles for nasty bits of code. Another virus has been battering at my firewall for the last week or so called W32.Badtrans. This one does little damage to the system but, according to Symantec, can open a console to log in your keypresses when details such as password and credit card numbers are being typed in. It then transmits these to a series of email addresses. The key to these mails are an underscore before the senders address (stops the stupid from telling them they are infected), a subject line of 'Re.' and a double extension on the attachment such as 'doc.pif' or 'xls.scr' etc.
I would recommend people to upgrade their virus protection to Norton 2002 which handles these perfectly. Oh and there is a tool on the Symantec site to get rid of 'Goner' with little trouble ( I had to do this for someone this evening) Maybe it does not work for NT or maybe your support team did not look on the Norton site. -- Roy Wood Q Branch, 20 Locks Hill Portslade. Sussex. BN41 2LB. UK Tel : +44 (0)1273 386030 Fax : +44 (0)1273 381577 Mobile +44(0)7836 745501 Web : www.qbranch.demon.co.uk
