> 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
The forum this morning has six stalled messages containing the offending file,
four of them (allegedly) from forum subscribers and two from 'spammers'. None
of them has been distributed to subscribers, as far as I know. I certainly
haven't had them. If you have posted a message in the last 2 days which hasn't
appeared, a virus scan on your system would be a wise precaution. There seems
to be genuine content in several of these, which wouldn't happen in a random
post by a third party.
The forum is intended to preclude the distribution of attachments (and I haven't
seen any sent over it for a long time), precisely to prevent viruses being sent
to you in this way.
The mechanism suggested by Jeremy, whereby both target and apparent 'sender' are
selected from the address book on an infected machine, seems quite likely. In
the past such messages have been sent to people purporting to come from me.
Let us hope this tiresome virus soon fades from view.
John Cliff
Europa Forum minder
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