New Dangerous "Bubble Boy" virus found! 11/10/99

New Dangerous "Bubble Boy" virus found! 11/10/99

This question was answered on November 10, 1999. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Network Associates Inc parent company of Mcafee Anti-virus reported the discovery of a brand new strain of virus/worm that has the potential to be the most descructive type of virus ever discovered While the "Bubble Boy" worm does not do any real damage, variations that due are certain to me launched in the next few months In the past, it was not possible to become infected with a virus by simply reading an e-mail message, until now! The "Bubble Boy", named after a Seinfeld episode, has been found to launch its payload by simply opening the message

User of Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 5.0 are in the highest risk category for contracting this new strain As of this writing, Netscape mail users are unaffected By simply clicking on the message (not even opening it!) and viewing it in the "preview pane" (usually below the list of messages), Outlook Express users can become infected Users of Outlook (the full version) can not be infected by previewing the message, but can become infected if they open the message.

DETECTION:

The Bubble Boy virus can be spotted by its subject line which will be "Bubble Boy is back!" You can download a patch from Mcafee if you are a current user of the Mcafee Anti-Virus program at:

<a href="http://download.mcafee.com/updates/updates.asp

"><font color="#003399">http://download.mcafee.com/updates/updates.asp

</font></a>

Outlook Express and Outlook users can also thwart this new strain of virus by downloading a security patch from Microsoft that will keep the worm from executing We highly recommend anyone with IE 5.0 to download this patch as it fixes the overall security hole that is exploited by many possible situations, not just e-mail virus/worms.

You can get the patch at:

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/security/Bulletins/ms99-032.asp

"><font color="#003399">http://www.microsoft.com/security/Bulletins/ms99-032.asp

</font></a>

We will stay on this situation and alert you via our warning e-mail system as soon as we find more information If you would like to be notified of any future virus threats (free of charge)

<a href="http://www.support4free.com/quikreg.cfm"><font color="#003399">CLICK HERE!</font></a>

About the author

Posted by Ken Colburn of Data Doctors on November 10, 1999

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