David,
Thanks for the warning (this appears to be a particularly nasty little one)
although
I believe these aren't actually via the Forum, but they do appear to be
- I haven't received them, although I have received some others, including one
---From Jabiru, and one that appeared to come via the Europa factory.
What the virus appears to do is pick two addresses from the user's emails and/or
address book and send the email to one, supposedly from the other. That way
there is a chance the recipient will trust the email and open the attachment,
given that the recipient knows the 'sender'. It will also get past a lot of spam
filters on that basis, too.
The instances I've had have both had attachments with an .scr attachment - which
is a screensaver file, basically a Windows executable. If anyone gets an email
with such an attachment, just delete the whole email.
Full details are at
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.html - I
note that Symantec have just upgraded the severity based on the number of
occurrences.
This is off-topic, I know, but I hope worthwhile given that Forum contributors
are all at risk of getting these email. I suspect non-contributing 'lurkers' are
safe, given that they can only be reached through the Forum, and the software
strips out attachments before distributing posts.
Regards,
Jeremy
> from: David Glauser <david.glauser@xpsystems.com>
> date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 22:04:12
> subject: Re: VWarning: forum messages containing a virus
>
> I've received several emails from the Europa forum this morning that contain
the BugBear virus. It shows as an attachment with one of several names, hoping
to get you to open it and infect your machine. The following posters have sent
infected emails:
>
> Steve Genotte
> Gerry Holland
> Carl Pattinson
>
>
> Cheers,
> David
> A071
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