Another day closer to Y2K — another virus surfaces.
A new Melissa-related virus is timed to deliver its payload at the start of Y2K. The worm-type virus can wipe out hard drives on infected PCs when the clock rings in the new year.
Symantec’s AntiVirus Research Center received reports of the latest virus, w32.Mypics.worm, on Thursday night.
Calling it a particularly “nasty” virus, Marian Merritt, group product manager at Symantec, said when the worm is activated, PC users may think they’ve been hit with Y2K problems, rather than the virus.
Similar to other recent Melissa-spawned viruses, MyPics attaches itself to e-mail using Microsoft Outlook and sends itself to 50 people on a user’s e-mail list.
The executable program is disguised as an image attachment, which users may naively double click on, setting off the program. The e-mail carries no subject line and has the message, “Here’s some pictures for you.”
When users click on the attachment no image appears — the first sign the PC may be infected. MyPics changes the homepage of the user’s Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to an address for a porn site on Yahoo’s GeoCities.
When Yahoo! discovered the porn site, it shut down access to the site and redirected traffic to the GeoCities homepage.
If a user notices either of these actions they can run an updated anti-virus software program which will prevent a total shutdown on Jan. 1, 2000.
“If you don’t take action, you’ll have a New Year’s Eve hangover for you and your PC,” said Merritt.
In the last six weeks a spate of new Melissa-related viruses have popped up, wreaking havoc on PCs worldwide. Only last week, a mutation of Explore Zip reappeared. In November PC users were warned to watch out for Prilissa, FunLove and Bubbleboy viruses.
Merritt said the anti-virus center tends to hear about new viruses every day although only a few are worthy of media attention.
MyPics is only the first of many Y2K viruses likely to appear, she said.
While heaps of warnings have been issued concerning downloads of attachments, many novice PC users may still be unaware of the perils of downloading.