Dear members,
I am forwarding a virus warning distributed by Lynn Nelson on Mediev-L, a
warning which is *not* a hoax but to be taken seriously. I also use the
opportunity to remind our members of two rules the observance of which can
both facilitate communication and prevent that a macro-virus of the kind
described below can be distributed on our list:
1) Please do not send file attachements to the list. People subscribe to
this list for receiving email, not for receiving additional materials
(formatted text documents, picture files, executable programs) which,
unlike plain text email, can create problems on their computer systems and
increase their online expenses. If you want to distribute a file because
you think that it is of interest for members of this list, please send only
an announcement of what you have to the list and ask interested members to
contact you off the list. If you receive an attachment on or off this list
without having requested it, do not open it and do not forward it to others
without having run it by a good anti-virus program.
2) When sending email to this list, please configure your email software to
send your mail as plain unformatted text, without features like italics,
bold text, underlining and special font size or paragraph formatting, and
preferably also without accented characters and umlauts. Keep always in
mind that you are sending your mail to hundreds of recipients all over the
world, many or most of which are using a different computer platform and/or
software and would receive your formatted mail only in garbled or
completely unreadable form.
Otfried Lieberknecht (co-owner of this list)
-------- forwarded virus warning: -------------------------
For those of you who have not yet heard, a new virus called
MELISSA was reported on Friday 26 March and has already become a
serious problem. It is, like the recent happy99.exe, being spread
by as an e-mail attachment although there is no reason why it
might not spread to other types of downloads. Infected
attachments appear to be propagating with different subject
names, but the recent names have been: "Subject: Important
Message From <name of actual sender>", and "Here is that document
you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-)"
MELISSA seems presently to be infecting only machines using
Microsoft Word 97 or Word 2000, and is made operative by being
opened when the macros of these programs are enabled. It then
uses these macros to send copies of itself to the first 50
entries in the Microsoft Outlook MAPI address book. Note that
only machines using Microsoft Outlook can propagate MELISSA,
other machines can harbor the virus. MELISSA then infects the
"HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Office\Melissa?" registry
key so that it repeats sending the fifty messages once each
session. Finally, it infects the "Normal.dot" template so that
each new Word document will be infected. For full information on
its actions within Word 97 and Word 2000, see
http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/ms99-002.asp
As this virus spreads, you may find difficulty in accessing some
sites due to the increased e-mail traffic. It will spread all the
more rapidly and be more difficult to contain if it is
communicated to large discussion lists, so I would ask everyone
using Word 97 and Word 2000 to disable their macros as soon as
possible and to refrain from posting messages with attachments to
any of your lists. Everyone may wish to update their anti-virus
programs to include MELISSA:
Computer Associates: http://www.support.cai.com
McAfee: http://vil.mcafee.com/vil/vm10118.asp
Sophos: http://www.sophos.com/downloads/ide/index.html#melissa
Symantec: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/mailissa.html
Trend Micro: http://housecall.antivirus.com/smex_housecall/technotes.html
You may verify this notice and keep abreast of further
developments a CERT:
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-99-04-Melissa-Macro-Virus.html,
Lynn
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Otfried Lieberknecht, Schoeneberger Str. 11, D-12163 Berlin
tel: ++49 +30 8516675, fax: ++49 +89 6661792543, [log in to unmask]
Homepage for Dante Studies:
http://members.aol.com/lieberk/welcome.html
Listowner of Italian-Studies:
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies/
Listowner of Medieval-Religion:
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion/
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