Well it was something of a baptism of fire for Louise Simon. She introduces
herself as the new manager of psci-come then we immediately get hit by (the
first?) virus on the list. [Technically it was a worm.]
For those that missed it, or for whom it still lurks in their inbox, this
nasty worm was sent as from "sciencecomm Uk Account
[[log in to unmask]]". A web site www.sciencecomm.com
exists but its not clear what it is up to. It appears that this email was
launched from campus-ventures.co.uk, a legitimate offshoot of the University
of Manchester, and specifically from Science Communication International
Limited. They have denied sending it but it my guess is that one of their
users received the pernicious creature and it emailed itself to the names in
their contacts folder in Outlook or a similar mail programme. Because that's
just one of the things it does.
The worm is instantly identifiable by its attachment, LIFE_STAGES.TXT.SHS
but the .SHS is not revealed on all systems. Do not open this attachment!
Delete the mail and you will be OK. The subject headline is "Jokes" and the
content of the text file is indeed jokes, but only the sort that would
appeal to the sort of worm that wrote the worm. Opening the file on a
Windows system will activate Notepad, give the feeble minded a giggle and
infect your system.
In technical terms, the worm is rather nasty. McAfee (which picked up the
virus when it hit our system) rates it as high risk. The consequences,
besides pissing off your clients and alienating your lovers, are rather
complicated. For the technically minded, they are summarised at (and
elsewhere).
http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=98668&
So Louise, you might think that was a hard start to management of psci-com.
Just wait until Kenward, Boddington and Briggs get into a scrap. Then both
words and worms will fly!
Meanwhile, some things for psci-commers to think about:
1) You can update your virus checker daily online for around $50 a year. All
but the poorest of us should do it.
2) Don't open messages about jokes when they come from generally humourless
sources like psci-com.
3) If you find a strange attachment on an email, don't open it. Instead,
type the name of the attached file into a search engine like altavista.com
and see what that comes up with.
4) Finally, can we not technically prevent attachments going through
psci-com? Word files have already caused much annoyance for many people who
choose not to be dominated by Microsoft and I have seen nothing yet on
psci-com that cannot be sent as plain text.
Cheers
Andy
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