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Subject: [FLWASHIN] New E-Mail Virus Disguised as Joke
Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 06:18:18 -0700 (PDT)

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News Article: New E-Mail Virus Disguised as Joke

<SMALL><I>By BRUCE MEYERSON, AP Business Writer</I></SMALL>

Fresh from fending off the insistent advances of an e-mail virus
disguised as a love letter, computer users were facing a new
variation of the destructive bug, this one concealed as a joke.

Computer systems around the world were infected Thursday as the
virus, proclaiming "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line of an e-mail,
overwhelmed networks and burrowed into computer hard drives,
destroying files containing precious photos and video.

Antivirus experts said the initial outbreak seemed to be
slowing, but warned that copycat versions were already making the
rounds.

"Things are cooling down a bit as businesses close," Pirkka
Palomaki, director of product marketing for the computer security
firm F-Secure, said late Thursday. But, he warned, "We would
probably anticipate that people will see some of new copycats (this
morning)."

By some estimates, the original "love bug" infected tens of
millions of computers worldwide, not only spreading by e-mail like
last year's Melissa virus, but through instant messaging systems
that let people chat on the Internet.

And, in another malicious twist, the new virus was designed to
destroy several types of increasingly popular computer files,
including those storing photographs and video.

"If this (virus) is unleashed on your home computer, I hope you
have backups. It is a destructive file," said Shawn Hernan,
vulnerabilty team manager at the CERT Coordination Center, the
government-chartered computer security team at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh.

Initially, the bug also attacked by steering a computer's
Internet browser to visit a Web site that was later shut down by
its service provider. At the Web site, the virus would download a
program that searched for various types of passwords and sent them
to an e-mail account that appears to be based in the Philippines,
antivirus experts said.

Computer security experts urged computer users to delete any
e-mail with an attachment reading "LOVELETTER" or "Very Funny."
The virus is activated by opening the attachment.

The virus targets computers running on Microsoft's Windows
operating system, attacking the Outlook e-mail program and the
Internet Explorer browser, both of which are also made by
Microsoft.

It spreads like most e-mail viruses, arriving as a seemingly
friendly message, infiltrating a person's computer address book and
sending copies of itself to contacts listed.

But in addition to overwhelming computer networks with the sheer
crush of e-mail it generates, the new virus strikes out at some of
the most popular new passions on the Internet, destroying digital
photographs and hiding music fil

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