W97M/Thus.A

W97M/Thus.A "Thursday" virus alert (9/2/99)

This question was answered on September 2, 1999. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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The W97M/Thus.A aka the Thursday virus was discovered last week The likelyhood of infection for the average user is very low, but a recent spread of infection has been reported by AVERT, the anti-virus research division of NAI Labs According to AVERT, "The pattern of reports from multiple financial institutions around the world in rapid succession suggests the initial outbreak may have occurred through the distribution of a single infected document within the financial community."

This virus is a Microsoft Word Macro virus which is spread through infected Word documents It will turn off the macro detection/warning feature in Word and infect the normal.dot template which will cause all new documents to be infected with this macro virus The payload is set to delete files on the C: drive on December 13th (every year) The only way to contract this virus is to open an infected Microsoft Word document

VIRUS PREVENTION TIP! - In order to prevent a macro virus from running when opening any Word document, simply hold the shift key down while opening the file This manually tells Word not to process any macros that are embedded in the document This will also work when opening a Word document that has been sent as an attachment to an e-mail message.

Both Norton Anti-virus and Mcafee Viruscan have been updated to detect and clean this virus.

Get the latest Norton update at:

<a href="http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html"><font color="#003399">http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html</font></a>

Get the latest Mcafee update at:

<a href="http://download.mcafee.com/updates/updates.asp"><font color="#003399">http://download.mcafee.com/updates/updates.asp</font></a>

About the author

Posted by Ken Colburn of Data Doctors on September 2, 1999

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