On Tuesday 13 February 2001 11:13 am, Barber, Kenneth L. wrote:
> it was jibberish because your antivirus or somebodies antivirus along the
> way destroyed it. there is a virus going around. my antivirus has caught a
> few layely.
>

No, it was a pukkah virus. I have looked at it in an editor, the VB Script
decrypts the actual virus (which is that LONG (2k) line of gibberish) and
then executes. I wrote a program last night which decrypted that line to
analyse what in fact it did. Luckily it is mainly harmless, working only on
Outlook, mailing itself to everyone in your address book (even deleteing them
after their sent!), then going into an endless loop (which is why people say
it slows the computer).

Unlike other virii it doesn't appear to try to infect your computer (by
calling itself on reboot for example (like "I love you")). So just rebooting
and deleting the offending e-mail should be OK, although it does leave a
couple of tokens in the Windows Registry.

Remember to only open attachments where you know the person sending it. Lets
be careful out there.

Cheers

Deri

PS Some lists prevent all attachments reaching the List. We could do this -
but it does seem like a bit of a sledge hammer for a nut.

PPS If you are worried about an attachment, but want someone to give it a
"once over", feel free to send me a copy (off list of course), I'll let you
know if its safe.