SV: please check for viruses

[Birgit Kellner]

Lars Martin Fosse wrote:

>The mail systems at the University of Oslo were more or less down and
>out yesterday due to virus attack. I don't know if they are back up
>today, but in this country, the attack has been quite severe in many
>places. The UiO has taken steps to deal with the problem.
>
>Lars Martin Fosse
>
>
>
In addition, may I humbly suggest that if the degree of virus-infection
seems to be country-specific, this is just a coincidence. Viruses know
no geographical borders, and the Internet is not really separated into
"countries", technology-wise.

This virus operates by gathering e-mail-addresses stored in various
folders on the infected system. It then randomly mails itself to such
addresses. Hence, if some countries seem not to have been targeted yet
this at best means that noone sends e-mails to people with addresses
registered in these countries - hence the virus finds no addresses from
these countries in infected systems :-)

The virus also spreads through Windows network shares, so be careful if
you work in a local Windows network.

As such, this particular virus is not as vicious as previous worms who
would pick not only addresses, but also subject lines for their mail
messages from the local system, making it much more difficult to know,
as a recipient, whether a message contains a virus or not. We'v had
cases where people got virus messages with Indology subject-lines and
opened them, trustingly, of course ...

Not with this virus, though. It always has one of the following
subject-lines and can therefore be identified quite easily:

Re: That movie
Re: Wicked screensaver
Re: Your application
Re: Approved
Re: Re: My details
Re: Details
Your details
Thank you!

Best regards,

Birgit Kellner