Hi Folks, I wanted to give you a heads-up that there is a virus currently spreading like wildfire on the internet. It is the W32/Lovsan.worm (a.k.a. "msblast.exe") worm. You can find information and additional links about it here:
<http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,39115651,00.htm> http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,39115651,00.htm and if you do not have an antivirus program on your home machines that detects it, you can get a free one here: <http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/> http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/ (Note: I have downloaded and used Stinger and it appears to be safe and it does detect and remove Lovsan.worm, as well as several others). This effects ALL Windows platforms except 95/98 that connect to the Internet and do not use a firewall that blocks port 135 (Remote Procedure Call). Here's why this virus is so serious. Most viruses spread through email and users that click on objects thinking they are pictures or URL's to benign websites, when in fact they launch and execute a program on their machine that installs the virus. This one is different, it comes to you courtesty of the good people in Redmond, Washington via a nice big security hole in the Windows operating system itself that allows ANY other computer to execute commands on YOUR computer (i.e. Remote Procedure!). So you can be sitting there, connected to the Internet, doing nothing whatsoever and all of a sudden you are infected! You can tell if the virus is on your computer by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete and getting a Task List. Look for a program named "msblast.exe" - if it is running on your computer you are infected. Fortunately, cleaning up seems to be relatively easy - the FIRST thing you want to do is STOP msblast.exe (hit the "End Process" button in Task Manager) and erase the file. The second thing is to remove a key which it stored in the Windows Registry to automatically restart itself every time you reboot. If you find you have the virus I'll be happy to give you more details if you need them, but click on the links above and they should point you in the right direction. And finally, you need to download the latest security patches from the good people at Micro$osft! The patches are less than 30 days old, so even if you have updated your computer recently, make sure you have the latest patches! I've never seen such an effective virus - fortunately it's not all that destructive. It's long-term intent is to actually have millions of computers around the world start a giant DOS (Denial Of Service) attack on the guys who started this whole mess - Micro$oft! That is scheduled to occur on 8/16/2003. If it is successful you'll have great difficulty downloading the patches, so do it now. Naturally, this only effects Windows "operating systems"! Linux and MAC are not effected. -Mike
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