How to counter the ILOVEYOU virus

The ILOVEYOU virus is a dangerous "worm" virus activated by opening an attachment carried in a message titled ILOVEYOU.<br><br>The worm is a VBS (Visual Basic script) program that is sent attached to an

Thursday, May 4th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

The ILOVEYOU virus is a dangerous "worm" virus activated by opening an attachment carried in a message titled ILOVEYOU.

The worm is a VBS (Visual Basic script) program that is sent attached to an e-mail with the subject ILOVEYOU. The mail contains the message "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me."

If the user clicks on the attachment, the worm runs using the Windows Scripting Host program to enter Microsoft Outlook's Address Book.

Users running Microsoft Outlook on Windows 95/NT/98/2000 are vulnerable to this attack, experts say. Anyone receiving such an e-mail should not open the message or click on the attachment. Opening the message can spread the virus through your address book entries.

Delete the e-mail and the attachment immediately, experts advise.

VirusScan 4 by Dr. Solomon is the first anti-virus software to issue an updated patch for this virus. VirusScan software may be downloaded from the Web at www.zdnet.co.uk/software/fstore/1/M/000H1M.html. A patch with the updated ILOVEYOU information must then be downloaded from www.drsolomons.com/home/extra.zip. Copy the file called extra.dat to the directory in which the VirusScan program resides and restart Windows.

U.S. anti-virus sites were sometimes swamped with requests for information on the virus this morning.

Some that offer help are McAfee's Web site (www.mcafee.com), Dr. Solomon's Best Virus Alert at www.drsolomon.com and Symantec (www.symantec.com).