Author: Amir Ban
Date: 14:20:32 12/02/99
The email Eugenio Castillo talks about in the thread "Virus" came from me. I did not actually send him an email, rather the virus did. This is the "Explore.zip worm" virus. It's bad and devious ! Once you are infected, it will scan your email folders and address books and it will GENERATE FABRICATED EMAILS WITH ATTACHMENT TO ANYONE YOU'VE EVER KNOWN. The email it sends is a formula which appears to be a genuine message. Here's what Eugenio received: ----- Mensaje original ----- De: Amir Ban <amirban@m-sys.com> Para: <EUGEN7@teleline.es> Enviado: jueves, 02 de diciembre de 1999 12:00 Asunto: RE: Paderborn > Hi EUGENIO ! > I received your email and I shall send you a reply ASAP. > Till then, take a look at the attached zipped docs. > bye. > > > The subject "Re: Paderborn", the name "Eugenio", and the text are all automatically generated by the virus, based on the fact that Eugenio once sent me a message titled "Paderborn" ! The virus has a curious "bug", sometimes it will "sign" the message, but with the name of someone else (who is real). E.g. someone else got this message from me, but it was signed "Ruth". To realize how devious this virus is, realize that I got a clear warning about it earlier, with a description of the message to look out for, but when I got it I thought it was a genuine message (I got it from my VP of Marketing) ! I was infected for 50 minutes today at noontime. Though I realized within minutes that I got the virus, closed Microsoft Outlook and rebooted, the virus can send emails through the Microsoft Exchange even if Outlook is closed ! If you are infected, make sure you are not connected to the outside world until you have run the antidote. During the 50 minutes I was infected, it sent about 50 such messages. All of them have already been warned. So you don't need to worry about emails from me, but this thing is going around like wildfire and you should be worried about getting it from everyone else in the world. Watch out ! Oh, by the way, besides spreading itself, it also destroys your C files and MS office files. It opens them for update and closes them, leaving the file with zero length. I heard this evening that one of Israel's biggest telecom companies (ECI) is paralyzed because of this virus. If you need the antidote, write me and I'll send it to you. I already sent it to Eugenio three hours ago. Amir
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