Email attachment with the above subject heading. This one is serious in that it will attempt to wipe the hard disk.

You've been warned

DazV

Oh no! Quick! panic! Email everyone I know and tell them!

Or see the error of your ways here:

Oh bugger, sorry - just trying to help. I got the info from a normally reliable source.

I love these virus hoaxes/chain letters that do the rounds every now and again. My favourate bits are when they say things along the lines of "Microsoft say it is well bad" or "It will format your hard drive and at present there is no known cure"

I have been using PC's for about 8 years and in all that time I think I have only seen 2 REAL viruses (Not counting the ILOVEYOU type ones, if you are stupid enough to open a .vbs file you get sent then you deserve everything you get.

Even better is when they start saying that it will wipe your hard drive, destory your sound card, monitor, the lamp next to the TV.......

But there are some hoax's like this.

Joey,

being a bit tech-luddite like, what is a .vbs file mate?!

Any explanations very welcome!
Thankyou!

Jon

Mossman,

A .vbs file is a Visual Basic Script file. If you ever get sent an attachment with a naming convention like this LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs then DO NOT open it. Notice the way they have tried to disguise the file and make it look like a harmless .TXT file.

Basically when you open the file you run the script!! This is a VERY simplistic virus and explains why it spawned lots of other viruses as you can simply edit the script and create a new version of the virus.

Sorry Daz, didn't mean to have a go.

Always useful to check the Symantec or similar sites if a reported virus sounds a little iffy.

A dead giveaway is the claim that it was reported by AOL, Microsoft or IBM. A deliberate attempt to convince inexperienced users who may not have heard of Norton / Solomons / McAfee.

A .vbs file is Visual Basic Script, a programming language that can be used to do certain things if used malicously. The problem with .vbs files that thay are recognised by windows and therefore by default don't show the extention. So a file that appears loveletter.txt could in fact be loveletter.txt.vbs, a vbs file and not a harmless text file as it would appear to be.

Mossman

vbs = Visual Basic Script a subset of the Visual Basic Development language from Microsoft.

A lot of products use them ( SQL Server / Site Server ) legitimately BUT a lot of virus are written in this language.

You can achieve a lot of damage with one as I found out the other day when I opened a vbs file which was a virus and it completely ruined my system and spread itself around replacing all valid vbs files on my system with copies of itself.

As a default your File associations usually have a default of 'open' if you double click on a vbs file, I have now changed this default to be 'edit'.

Hope that helps.

P.S. Your mate got his 22B back on the road yet ?

Thanks for that JOey/Neil. I am learning, slowly!
Neil, 22B back on the road before Xmas and we went for a "play" on an airfield at the weekend! Will hopefully post some photos when developed! Awesome, awesome car! I get mine back tomorrow (or else!).

Jon

Mossman

Good to hear it's back on the road. Hope yours is soon too.

I am down at Listers on Saturday for my pads changing and they have P22BUK in at the moment so I'll probably have another dose of 'I wish I had £40k spare'.