Maybe this virus warning was a hoax, but the description closely matches that
of a real virus that got into my computer two weeks ago. It's the PWSteal
virus (Norton's terminology; AOL just refers to these as password-stealing
viruses). This virus is a descendent of one from last year that sends itself
to everyone on a person's buddy list. PWSteal only infects computers that
use AOL (which is a pretty high percentage of the Internet users). You
receive what appears to be a message (starting with "Hey you!") from your
friend's computer, offering to download an interesting picture. If you do
download it, then the next time you log onto AOL, you get a message that the
password you entered is invalid; a box appears in which to reenter your
password. Once you do so, the hacker who sent the virus can in principle
steal your password. Other features of the virus are that you can't navigate
the Web, back out of AOL, or backing out of Windows by any method other than
cutting off the power. The latest antivirus updates from Norton can get rid
of this virus, and I imagine the same would be true of the other major
antivirus vendors.
Andy Alpert
PolyLC Inc.
*****************************************************
Subj: [Fwd: budweiser hoax]
Date: 03/24/2000 3:45:33 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: ettlingr@musc.edu (Rebecca Ettling)
Sender: abrf-request@aecom.yu.edu (Association of Biomolecular Resource
Facilities)
Reply-to: ettlingr@musc.edu
To: abrf@aecom.yu.edu (Recipients of ABRF List)
"John F. Ettling" wrote:
Another hoax, per the handy dandy Norton Antivirus site.
>
> See
> http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/budsaver.exe.html
>
>
> Warning #2 on this page is a match.
-- Rebecca P. Ettling
Biotechnology Resource Laboratory
Protein Sequencing and Peptide Synthesis Facility
Medical University of South Carolina
173 Ashley Avenue, Room 733D BSB
Charleston, SC 29403
Tel.: (843) 792-1271
Fax: (843) 792-1264
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Mar 27 2000 - 11:29:47 EST