Another ‘cool’ virus on the prowl

BANGALORE: After Drooling over Anna Kournikova and coveting another man's

wife and elated at a online proposal-I Love You, its made us netizens more

matured from being attracted at such ‘cheap’ ways of getting infected. So if

you have received a mail inviting you to check on something ‘really cool’,

wake up, its possible another new virus.

In a press release issued today, Researchers at the Symantec AntiVirus

Research Center (SARC) have issued a warning about a new worm, VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm.

Due to an increase in the number of submissions, VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm was upgraded

today to a Category 4 threat (severe). It is an encrypted VBScript worm that

sends itself to all recipients in an infected user's Microsoft Outlook address

book.

Infections of the worm have been reported in the Asia Pacific region-in

particular Australia and New Zealand. The Anti-virus definitions have been

available from Symantec since May 9 2001 athttp://www.symantec.com/avcenter/tools.list.html

.

The email message has the following characteristics:

Subject: "Homepage"

Body:

Hi!

You've got to see this page! It's really cool ;O)

Attachment: Homepage.HTML.vbs

When the attachment is opened, the worm mails itself to the entire Microsoft

Outlook address book. It then tries to randomly open one of the four

pornographic Web pages. The company has also advised organizations to delete any

emails with attachments called VBS.VBSWG2.D@mm or VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm.

Better be on the alert folks! While receiving such mails of ‘cool forwards’

even from reliable sources, just delete them without a second thought.