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W97M/Thurs.A or "Thursday" is a recent virus, discovered on 8/26/99.
W97M/Thus.A has been given a HIGH risk assessment by AVERT. Though it
spreads through sharing of documents, and not by automatically emailing
itself across networks, it has achieved a high rate of prevalence very
quickly.
The virus carries a potentially destructive payload that will attempt to
delete all files on a user’s c: drive on the trigger date of December
13th. The pattern of reports from multiple financial institutions around
the world in rapid succession suggests the initial outbreak may have
occurred through the distribution of a single infected document
within the financial community.
Users infected with the Thursday virus will see no obvious indications
that a document has been infected. However, because the virus infects
Word 97’s normal.dot, the size of that file will increase from its
normal 27K. In addition, the virus turns off Word 97’s Macro Warning
feature. If a “clean” document known to contain macros does not produce
the regular warning, this may be an indication that the system is
infected.
See http://www.mcafee.com/viruses/thurs/ for more info.
Conrad Bowers
I'm no computer expert, just passing this apparently genuine alert .
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