This is for real.
I just spent the last two hours on the phone as 'tech support' for my
father in law, who is doing great with his computer since we bought it for
him a few years ago. Last night he opened his mail, which typically
contains a lot of jokes, humor, and funny stuff from all of his WW2 buddies.
He opened an attachment called "new ballot" with a .exe suffix and he has
lost control of most of his system. I was able to access his email from
here and he actually had more than 10 copies of this virus in his email
from different folks in his circle.
We called Microsoft support just an hour ago and they are aware of it but
IT HAS NOT yet been added to the virus info at McAfee, Symantec and other
web pages. This virus is apparently a modified version of the 'Navidad'
virus with minor changes. As near as I can tell, the fix is the same as for
the 'navidad' virus and it can be found on the McAfee web site. Check
http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=98881&;
This one is for real. Honest. Then about an hour ago I got an email from my
son with the 'new ballot' virus attachment. Needless to say, I trashed it
and emptied the trash immediately and got rid of it.
Dick
Since writing the first part of this note I have just finished going
through the agonizing task of getting the bug off my Father-in-laws
computer. It is, indeed the navidad virus and you have to delete it in the
registry. I jus checked the Mcafee page and it's still not updated to
include this vifus. I used the Semantec page on this virus to find and fix
everything.
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