Source: Trend Micro
This mass-mailing worm propagates via email using MAPI and Microsoft Outlook, and installs backdoor programs on the infected user's computer. The email arrives with the subject line: "Nice Couple."
Solution:
Source: ZDNet
Source: ZDNet
L33tdawg: For those of you that don't want to read the full story, you'll probrably want to know that the subject line of infected e-mails reads either "Outlook Express Update" or has the e-mail address of the recipient. The body text says either "MSNSofware Co." or "Microsoft Outlook 98" and the attached file is always mmsn_offline.htm.
Source: Vnunet
Infections of the Badtrans.B virus escalated in December, accounting for nearly 90 per cent of all reported virus incidents. In November, Badtrans only accounted for 50 per cent of infections. However, outbreaks of SirCam, Nimda and Magistr are on the decrease.
Badtrans was also jockeying with SirCam for the most destructive virus of 2001 position. It was also the main suspect on the most virus active days of last year.
Source: EarthWeb.com
Every year seems to bring forth a virus related to New Year's, and each one seems to be different. The main danger we're looking at this time is the discrepancy of information from differing sources. If you look up "Happy New Year Virus" at your preferred search engine, you are likely to first see sources telling you that this is a hoax. In 1999, that was true. An e-mail was sent out with text similar to the following:
----------------------------
Microsoft Windows XP
Telnet BUG
----------------------------
discovered by David Ferreira
doctorsmoke@leirianet.pt
----------------------------
I think that this bug only crashes the telnet client of the current user and
nothing more. Telnet.exe will send a crash report if you change the port number to a large number of garbage, like this eg:
---- here ----
Yet another worm has cleverly taken advantage of a well-publicized and already patched vulnerability in Internet Explorer by offering an e-mail message that sounds legitimate to frequent Internet users.
Source: CNet News
L33tdawg: I think anyone writing viruses of this nature (obviously with the intent to cause damage) should be jailed for a long long time. These writers are bloody annoying and an utter nuisance to society. Furthermore, most times, these viruses are adaptations or variants if you will, and do not show any real technical prowess -- apart from the fact that the virus writer knows how to edit.
Source: Ananova
MessageLabs say they have intercepted a computer virus every 18 seconds this year.
The scanning firm says it stopped 1.6 million email viruses this year.
That compares to just 184,257 the year before.
The findings form part of an end-of-year report compiled by the managed service provider.
The Sophos technical support department has written a batch file, available in English, which you can use to remove infections of W32/Goner-A.
