Virus Alert
W32.Goner.A@mm is in the wild and dangerous - here's what to look for
Just discovered yesterday (December 04th 2001) the latest virus to hit the Web has resulted in a massive slowdown of many systems in the UK.
It propagates by email, using a Visual Basic script to carry itself.
What to look out for:
Email Subject is: Hi
Attachment: Gone.scr
Body:'When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you. I am in a harry, I promise you will love it!'
(note the mis-spelling of 'hurry')
Once the so-called 'screen saver' is executed, the worm becomes resident and terminates well known anti-virus and firewall programs, including AVG anti-virus and Zone Alarm, as well as Norton and other similar products. It will read through an Outlook address book and email itself to every address it finds in there, and can, if you have ICQ installed and operational, trawl through every contact or 'buddy' you have listed and infect itself to them as well.
Aside from just stopping the anti-virus and firewall processes, it can also delete the files required to let them run!
There's further information at Symantec's site where a fix can be found.
