virus alert

[ravi <gadfly@xxxxxxxx>]

michael pugliese: i believe your machine may be infected - i received
a message from you with an attachment that tried to exploit the hole
described below. this message was a response to a message that i had
sent to pen-l many days ago. for others, here is more info on the
virus:

** Dangerous New Virus, Same Old Hole

An old and well-known security flaw in Microsoft's Internet
Explorer is continuing to cause problems, as a new worm that
exploits the flaw spreads on the Internet.

The worm, known as W32/BadTrans.B-mm, has been spotted in 50
countries, and is propagating rapidly, says Dave White,
technical manager for security company MessageLabs. It takes
advantage of a well-publicized hole in Explorer, the same
vulnerability used by the Nimda virus, which infected millions
of computers earlier this fall.

A previous version of the worm, BadTrans.A, spread in April,
infecting users who opened an infected E-mail attachment, but
the new variant can infect users who merely read or preview the
message in Microsoft's Outlook E-mail program. Once activated,
the virus spreads by both replying to unread messages in the
user's mailbox and mailing everyone in the recipient's address
book. It also installs a Trojan-horse key-logging program on
the user's computer, which collects confidential information
like passwords and E-mails them to another address.

"We're getting hit quite hard," says Russ Cooper, surgeon
general for security firm TruSecure Corp. He says that a patch
for the IE vulnerability has been available since March, but
that home users in particular have been slow to update their
security. "Unless they've had a bad experience before, they
haven't learned what they should and shouldn't do," he says.
"The average person doesn't even know that these things exist,
so adoption is going to be slow." - David M. Ewalt

For more virus coverage, see
Virus Definition Update Rings False Alarm On Nimda
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eE260BvjNe0V20aAT0AV

New, Slower Version Of Nimda Worm Spreads
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eE260BvjNe0V20Zgm0AR

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	--ravi


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man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined
as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than
laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also
inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.