*** Off topic: ILOVEYOU virus warning ***

Hi all, Europe and Africa are being hammered by a new Outlook-replicated virus which has the subject line "ILOVEYOU" with an attachment called LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs. It seems that the amount of network traffic it generates can bring mailservers to their knees... From the datafellows.com website: VBS/LoveLetter is a VBScript worm. It spreads thru email as a chain letter. The worm uses the Outlook e-mail application to spread. LoveLetter is also a overwriting VBS virus, and it spreads itself using mIRC client as well. When it is executed, it first copies itself to Windows System directory as: - MSKernel32.vbs - LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs and to Windows directory: - Win32DLL.vbs Then it adds itself to registry, so it will be executed when the system is restarted. The registry keys that it adds are: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run\\MSKernel32 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\RunServices\\Win32DLL Next the worm replaces the Internet Explorer home page with a link that points to an executable program, "WIN-BUGSFIX.exe". If the file is downloaded, the worm adds this to registry as well; causing that the program will be executed when the system is restarted. After that, the worm creates a HTML file, "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.HTM", to the Windows System directory. This file contains the worm, and it will be sent using mIRC whenever the user joins an IRC channel. Then the worm will use Outlook to mass mail itself to everyone in each address book. The message that it sends will be as follows: Subject: ILOVEYOU Body: kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me. Attachment: LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs LoveLetter sends the mail once to each recipient. After a mail has been sent, it adds a marker to the registry and does not mass mail itself any more. The virus then searches for certain filetypes on all folders on all local and remote drives and overwrites them with its own code. The files that are overwritten have one of these extensions: ".vbs", ".vbe", ".js", ".jse", ".css", ".wsh", ".sct", ".hta" The virus also tries to use companion techniques, adding a secondary file next to existing file - hoping that the user will click on the wrong file. This is done so that the virus locates files with jpg, jpeg, mp3 and mp2 and adds a new file next to it. For example, a picture named "pic.jpg" will cause a new file called "pic.jpg.vbs" to be created. LoveLetter was found globally in-the-wild on May 4th, 2000. It looks like the virus is Philippine origin. At the beginning of the code, the virus contains the following text: rem barok -loveletter(vbe) <i hate go to school> rem by: spyder / ispyder@mail.com / @GRAMMERSoft Group / Manila, Philippines We now resume the scheduled program. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

On Thu, 04 May 2000 12:58:53 BST, Obnoxio The Clown Wrote: > > Europe and Africa are being hammered by a new Outlook-replicated virus > I figure that the benign think to do would be to alter the payload so that it installed Linux so that the problem wouldnt arise again ;-} /J\\