The Perfect Virus Killing Machine-D'Arcy Norman dot net

📰 Blog post | Posted on May 20, 2003 | 2 minutes | 275 words

I was emailed a virus over the weekend, and didn't even know it was malicious. It was rendered harmless by the Perfect Virus Killing Machine.

I run MacOSX. Windows virii are ineffective. I've never had a virus infect any of my macs. Ever. Sure, I've received copies of Windows virii, which I dutifully delete so they don't infect those on Lesser Systems, but they've never managed to do anything other than clog my inbox for a second or two.

From ArsTechnica:

Just a heads up, there's a new mass email virus filling up inboxes everywhere. I've had three of them already today, so I thought I'd try and get the word out. If you receive an email apparently from support@microsoft.com (the address is spoofed) with any of the subjects, "Re: My application", "Re: Movie", "Cool screensaver", "Screensavers", "Re: My details", "Your password", "Re: Approved (Red. 3394-65467)", "Approved (Ref. 38446-263)" or "Your details", delete it asap. It will contain an attached .pif, .ti or .uue file which is a trojan. The body of the email will read, "All information is in the attached file".

When opened, the virus searches hard disks for more email addresses to send itself to. It also tries to spread via remotely shared startup locations on a network. Those of you with anti-virus software can protect yourselves by updating your definitions ASAP. The rest of us can use common sense and never open executable email attachments from unknown or unexpected sources. More information can be found here and here .

Wow. That could have been bad... I got the "Re: My application" variant. And I was hoping that Microsoft was hiring... ;-)

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