Nasty Virus replicating:

[JohnR]

Nasty e-mail virus going around. when (not if) you receive an e-mail with the subject "HI" DO NOT OPEN IT!!!

Here are the details:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com...oner.a@mm.html

About 20% of my users have now opened it (apparently they cannot read as we warned them earlier today) and we're recieving this from numerous other sites as well...

Good Luck,

John

[Got Stripers]

Saw the HI email in my inbox 6 times this morning, so a bunch of people I know must be in trouble. Question, I've got McAfee virus scan and V-shield active with, what I thought was email scan, yet not one was quarantined. Should they have been stopped by a good virus program? I just selected everthing and deleted, but it looks like this will continue for a short while.

[Fishpart]

I had 43 Hi messages form one person...............Our email server is shut down right now................

[JohnR]

With Norton, the newest virus definitions were not available until 4-5pm yesterday. We were infected a little before 4pm. Previous virus definitions will not stop it. Part of the problem with all Anti-Virus software is that they are only good if they are current. If you're package does not upgrade nightly, you run an increased risk of infection.

My work system upgrades nightly. Since the patches went on, my firewall/mail scanner has stopped 875 "Goner" Viruses from coming into my facility. But that only happened after the defs were updated. You really need to be that vigillant about it to be marginally successfull.

GS - if you had broadband you could change to download daily but it's a real pain on a modem. But if you are using your one machine for work and play and were to lose that do to virus, preventing with checking the virus defs daily is worth it for you... I'll tell you all about it tomorrow because I'm at 99% hooky factor for tomorrow

Fishpart, you guys need an onsite IT person able to do everything , I thinks you need to put in a good word for me

[Fishpart]

We had one taking good care of us, but he kind of got snapped up by Alabama. He still works here but spends a lot of time traveling. Don't think we'll be able to replace him, but we'll probably have to share

[Swimmer]

John,
Thanks for giving me the impetus to update my Norton's this morning. On the new machine I have I didn't have desktop access to the anit-virus update, so it was necessary to do some reactive/proactive stuff, but alas all is well. What is with everyone who has to open virtually every message one is emailed. If the receiver doesn't know the sender deep six the GD message and you wont have to do a monday morning, day after we told you so scramble, trying to define and then destroy a virus. We have one of the best, yes, "one of the best guys around" giving us advice with our computors, (John), and everyone should listen to him. Enough of blowing Johns ego up, he he he.
Has anyone on the list any experience growing giant pumpkins? Their is huge interest around pertaining to this gardening hobby thing. I am going to get into it more deeply this year. I thought as a side venture to our initial interest of catching fish we might get a little competition going in this direction.
One more thing John, I had a really great reply on the R.I. license issue all written and was logged on to properly to send it but when I hit the submit button it disppeared.

[Fishpart]

My Mom is a summer widow because of the Giant Pumpkin thing. Unfortuately last year all my Dad's pumpkins rotted on the vine. The year before he had one over 300.

I won't be growing a big one myself, but I will certainly help with shoveling manure and providing moral support.

[JohnR]

Giant Pumpkins? There is no Giant Pumpkin Charlie Brown...

Swimmer, WTH are you talking about? I thought if being on The Force prohibits abuse of the wacky weed . Am I ignorant or is Fishpart shoveling that manure into my boots? I'm kinda a city boy you know....

[Mr. Sandman]

My mail scanner updates itself every 3 hours automatically. I saw it trap the virus several times yesterday and once today. I was lucky.

Don't let anyone use ICQ, (the instant messanger). The virus has been delivered via ICQ as well. ICQ utilizes a proprietary protocol for Internet
connections. It is not scanned under the standard protocols that
most scanners search for viruses. ICQ utilizes multiple servers to connect, however about half of that traffic runs through icq.com.

[JohnR]

I just read about that too, if any of you are using any Instant Messaging/IRC apps, this virus will forard to anyone on your "buddy list" and infect there systems as well. Anti-virus apps do not filter through those applications for viruses.