[sustran] Re: virus warning

[Eric Britton]

Craig mentions "The attachment name was images.pif and the virus was
W32.Badtrans.gen at mm".

This last is bad, if not fatal, news, but even if you have anti-virus
protection it can sometimes slip through. Here is how it works:

"This mass mailing worm attempts to send itself using Microsoft Outlook
by replying to unread and read email messages. It also mails itself to
email addresses found within files that exist on your system. It drops a
keylogging trojan (detected as PWS-Hooker with the 4173 DATs, or
greater) into the SYSTEM directory as KDLL.DLL. This trojan logs
keystrokes for the purpose of stealing personal information (such as
credit card and bank account numbers and passwords). This information is
later emailed to the virus author(s)."

Viruses are sheer paranoia -- until you get one, that is.  Once you have
it on your machine, your attitude matures rather rapidly.  Here are two
good sources for more:

* McAfee - http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_99069.htm

* Symantec -
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.badtrans.b@m
m.removal.tool.html 

Sigh.