MSN fighting Messenger difficulties, virus
The software giant acknowledged on Monday that it continued to battle a technical glitch that prevented MSN users from logging into the service's instant messaging system for the past three days. The problems, which several users complained about on discussion forums frequented by network administrators, caused several hours of outages on Monday morning.
The problems also coincided with emergence of a new computer virus, known as Funner, that spreads using the MSN instant messaging service and tries to direct people to a Web site, www.78p.com. However, security software firm Symantec found no evidence that the virus, which had only spread to a small number of PCs, had caused any disruptions. "From what we have been able to see, it tries to send itself out to all of your MSN Messenger contacts," said Oliver Friedrichs, senior director of Symantec's security response team. "But we have only seen about 34 submissions in the last 24 hours, really not that significant."
