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Precautions can halt virus in its tracks
Most work on same principle as Melissa 04/06/99 By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News
Even as a 30-year-old New Jersey man was arraigned Monday for disseminating the e-mail contagion known as Melissa, computer users continued to wrestle with its spread across computer networks around the world. Like the more than 21,000 computer viruses that preceded it, Melissa can be thwarted in its attempts to disrupt our computer lives. Melissa has wreaked havoc on the nation's e-mail system by replicating itself within Microsoft Word documents using a macro, a sort of mini-program. Microsoft's Excel and Word programs use macros to make certain tasks easier and executable with a single command. Melissa, which e-mails lists of Web porn sites to people listed in a victim's address book, was joined by several other potentially disruptive creations last week - Papa A, Papa B and Ping, to name a few. The viruses all work by similar methods, but they can't perform their missions without permission from the computer operator. Experts give some basic instructions to anyone using e-mail or systems exposed to e-mail downloads and attachments: * Take simple precautions. Download and install virus protection programs such as Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan and keep them updated by regularly by checking the manufacturers' Web sites, www.symantec.com and www.mcafee.com. * Scan for viruses daily. * Avoid infected templates (ready-to-use, permanent documents set up with a basic layout, formatting commands and formulas). Many of the latest viruses prey on users' tendencies to click through, rather than reading, warnings intended by Microsoft to make viruses harder to spread. The greatest dangers come from using infected templates to prepare things such as payroll checks and mass corporate distributions. Within Excel and Word under Tools, find Option, then General. Make sure there is a check mark on the item Macro Virus Protection. * Steer clear of attachments. Be careful about opening any attachments sent to you via e-mail - even if they appear to be coming from acquaintances. If any appear with the message line "An important message from (a friend of yours)" and contain a document called list.doc, delete the message and, if possible, the list.doc item from wherever your computer stores e-mail attachments. Anti-virus programs are designed to do this for you.
* Scan if things get weird. If your machine starts acting strangely, immediately run a virus scan to make sure you aren't allowing problems to propagate through a virus.
* Do some disinfecting. If you detect a virus, follow instructions from your virus program for disinfection. Macs can run Microsoft Office, so they can be affected by viruses such as Melissa. However, tests show that the virus is PC-specific when it goes to send out its messages. In other words, it doesn't replicate properly in Macs. Still, Macs with Word and Excel have the same option to disable macros. People should always disable macros when opening something foreign - that goes for both Macs and PCs. The same procedure applies - same menus, same clicks. If you open the attached Melissa list.doc file and macros is enabled on your Mac, the virus will just spew out the code lines. In other words, it's ineffective on Macs.
Running steps
The steps for deleting viruses are similar among the anti-virus software programs. Here is how McAfee recommends running its VirusScan, available for free at download.mcafee.com:
* Make a clean, write-protected start-up diskette. For information on making such a diskette, go to vil.mcafee.com/vil/0318.asp and read Document No. 0318.
* Turn off your computer, insert the write-protected diskette, then turn on your computer and wait for the "A:" prompt.
* Remove the clean start-up diskette from drive A.
* Insert the original VirusScan diskette into drive A (if running VirusScan for Windows, you may need to use diskette No. 2 of 2, or depending on your version of VirusScan, you may have a diskette labeled "Emergency Disk").
* Eliminate the virus on your hard drive by typing the following command at the "A:" prompt: scan c: /clean/all.
* Restart your computer after the virus has been removed.
* If VirusScan still reports a virus, in most cases the boot diskette probably was not write-protected.
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