This newest critter that is making its way around can infect you if you visit a malicous website in addition to the usual email route. According to what I have read, you can at least block it from infecting you via a website by having all the latest security updates for IE 5.0 or 5.5...or even better if you are using IE 6.0 (my choice) Of course for the email, this critter uses an invisible attachment that runs when you open the email. So be carefull with blank subject lines or nonsensical subject lines. However latest virus programs with up to date virus definitions that scan your email are the best defense. Note the default configuration of Norton AntiVirus does not scan your email you have to set it to do that and it only works with POP3 accounts...sorry AOL guys you are SOL as they say. Here's a link to the security updates for IE 5 and 5.5 Security Patches Terry
If it is what I think it is, this worm has been out for a while. We have been getting it at school in email attachments for a long time. My norton util seems to have picked up on it pretty well. Plus, it does not attack every windows system. I think I heard that Win 95 and 98 are not effected but could not be my life on that.
Negative on that, CDAY. The variant I have been investigating, PE_NIMDA.A is smart enough to attack 9x/Me/NT/2k systems. It can propagate through e-mail, infected websites (actually, this is done mostly via a variant called JS_NIMDA for javascript), IIS servers and network shares. The site out here (26k ppl) on Tuesday shut down EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER to to prevent propagation via the networks. They have been going through, PC by PC, since then to detect and destroy. If one PC on the network has it, check all shared PCs on that network for it. As far as I can tell it doesn't carry a destructive payload, but there HAVE been reports (unconfirmed) of a variant rewriting sector 0 (and some sector 1 as well) which destroys your FAT (basically prevents access to data on your HD, unless you have a GOOD data recovery hack). So, take heed and please follow the doc's advice.
Ha! I've already got a virus on my computer...it causes massive incompatabilities, frequent lockups, and generally makes my life miserable...I believe it is called "Windows" or something like that. Tried to download the stupid security patch...got it downloading...then got it installing...and...nothing. After an hour of nothing happening I hit Cancel..."are you sure you want to cancel Setup?"...yes I'm sure..."Setup is cancelling...it may take several minutes...please do not reboot you computer now or you may damage your system." Great, except six hours later it is still "cancelling" with that same message up. Feh!...so I rebooted anyway...how can you "damage" a system that is this flawed in the first place? Hope I didn't wreck anything...seems to be working. stu