More Viruses Due -- Are You Ready?

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- More Viruses Due -- Are You Ready?

Henry Norr Monday, June 5, 2000

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Last week's Killer Resume menace turned out to be a bit overblown, but in view of the "success" -- from a virus writer's perspective -- of previous attachment-borne worms like Melissa and ILoveYou, it's safe to assume that others, possibly even more dangerous, will be showing up soon.

So if you care about your data and your time, doing what you can to safeguard your system from such threats should be a top priority. Unfortunately, even an up-to-date antivirus program won't necessarily protect you, because the attachments these new bugs travel in look like legitimate files; only until they've begun to do their damage can antivirus engineers provide updates that identify and destroy them.

And with the emergence of "complex polymorphic" versions -- viruses that change some of their attributes each time they replicate -- it's getting harder and harder for the guys in the white hats to keep up.

That's why computer-security experts recommend extreme caution about attachments -- and why I wish people would stop sending them when they could just as well put what they have to say in plain text in the body of their message.

I've gone so far as to set up my copy of Outlook so it automatically fires off a nasty reply whenever it receives a message with a file attached. It reads:

"This is an autoreply to all messages containing attachments. In the wake of Melissa and the Love Letter, it should be obvious that such files are a menace to life as we know it. Unless you've made prior arrangements with me to send an attachment, please put what you want me to see into the body of your message -- a simple copy and paste will do the trick -- then remove the attachment and send the message again. If you don't, I'm probably not going to read the attachment. (I couldn't care less about your fancy formatting, so don't worry about that getting lost.)"

Setting up Outlook to deliver this message was so complicated, it would take more space than I have to explain how I did it. If you want instructions on how to make your own version, e-mail me and I'll send you a step-by-step guide.

A better solution, though, is probably to install Microsoft's Outlook E-mail Security Update, a patch for the company's Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 programs that is designed specifically to reduce the danger from these e-mailed viruses. Unfortunately, the update is late -- it was originally slated for release the week of May 22 -- but it may be out by the time you read this. You can download it, or at least read the latest on its status, at officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/articles/out2ksecarticle.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/06/05/BU25661.DTL

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), June 05, 2000


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