Fellow Listers, On 12/17 I received a post from the list which had the header "CS>Lupus". The text was a light blue/green background with large letters spelling http://stuart.messagemates.com/index.html and underneath that was the following: Hypercool Happy New Year 2000 funny programs and animations... We attached our recent animation from this site in our mail ! Check it out !
There was an attachment called monica.exe. I clicked it and nothing seemed to happen except I got an error message saying a dll file could not be found, so it wouldn't install. Was I wrong! I didn't think much more of it until some of my friends on my mailing list got an email from me with an attachment called panthr.exe or panther exe. A little sleuthing turned up a new virus which is known as W32 NewApt. Worm. What it does is grab your mailing list and send the same message (itself) to everyone, anytime your modem is on. It only affects users that have Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Navigator. This virus was first discovered in Italy on 12/14 so you can see it didn't take long to get around. And it's going to spread quickly if it mails itself to everyone on anybody's mail list and then everyone on that list and so on. The above message about "Happy New Year 2000" will show up if you have an HTML capable email setup. Otherwise, the message will say the following in plain text on a white background. he, your lame client cant read HTML, haha. click attachment to see some stunningly HOT stuff One way to tell if you are infected is to ask people you know if they received it. If so, you probably gave it to them. Another way is to double click on the little double computer down on the lower right part of your task bar. This brings up the modem dialog box with the connection speed and disconnect dialog. If you see the modem is receiving and sending and you aren't doing anything to cause it to, it is probably busy sending itself to all those people on your email list. You can't remove this worm because it installs itself in your registry and reloads itself every time you turn the computer on. There is an easy way to remove it if you think you are infected. It requires modifying the registry using regedit. If you think you have been infected, let me know and I'll email you the fix. It requires you to modify the registry, so you can see it's pretty serious. Just trying to delete the file will not work. If you have Norton Anti Virus, you can protect your self by downloading the current virus definitions by LiveUpdaate or from the Download Virus Definition Updates page. If too many of you ask, I'll post the fix to the list but I'm hesitant to because of the fact you have to modify the registry. Techy folks should have no problem but if you are not techy, perhaps you should locate a friend to help you. The steps are very simple but there is a danger of corrupting the registry if you don't do it correctly. Trem Williams [email protected]
