New Email Worm 'My Party' Surfaces, Begins to Grow.

LONDON (Reuters) - A new computer bug that tries to trick computer users into clicking on a virus-infected Web link masquerading as party photos emerged in Asia on Monday morning and began spreading to Europe, computer experts said.


The so-called "My Party" worm, which is not considered destructive, spreads by infiltrating popular email software Microsoft Windows Address Book and Outlook Express Database.

The worm emails itself to every person in an infected users' email log making it look as if the worm comes from a colleague or friend, experts said.

Anti-virus specialist Trend Micro gave it a medium risk rating. Security firms said that compared with past email worms, such as Nimda and Sircam, the number of reported "My Party" infections thus far is moderate.

The virus arrives as an email with the subject line "new photos from my party!" It contains an innocuous looking file attachment called www.myparty.yahoo.com. A message in the body of the email reads: "Hello! My party... It was absolutely amazing! I have attached my web page with new photos! If you can please make color prints of my photos. Thanks!"

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus, said because it carries what appears to be an authentic link from the popular Web portal Yahoo and appears to come from a colleague or friend, the worm has the potential to spread quickly.

As of 1200 GMT, Sophos received reports of infection from corporate clients and academic institutions in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Sophos has devised a patch at: http:/www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyzes/w32mypartya.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...arty_worm_dc_3

Well it STRUCK - I think Norton finally got rid of it - I hope.... WARNING - Your Hotmail virus scan WILL NOT DETECT THIS! I have no one in the hotmail address book so it should not have passed my computer. Also note that Norton doesn't want to quarrantine it right away - it took a few tries and a reboot - now it seems to be gone.

The virus was in my email mailbox tonight (actually sent twice to me). Just as described above, and both emails showed 41k's. Didn't open either one, as I had luckily seen it mentioned earlier on CNN. It was sent from "@union.edc" or"@union.edu".
Be careful !!!

bj-21.

I didn't think much of it to start because the few other times viruses have been sent to my Hotmail, the Hotmail virusscan detects it. Not this one.

A big thank you for this warning. I got home an hour ago from a HPN (White Plains, NY)-ORD-DFW flight. There were two "party" messages from someone that I knew. I didn't open them but could easily have done so since I'm quite tired. I've just gone back and deleted them.
Thanks again,
Mark, Dallas

This is one of the reasons it is always important to update your virus definitions...most vendors release a new set once a week - I know symantec release a new set either Wednesday or Thursday of each week. In addition, when you hear about a virus outbreak, you should try to run liveupdate, and if that doesn't work, log onto www.sarc.com and follow the links to download the definitions manually...in the event of an outbreak, definitions are normally available here before they are added to the liveupdate system - I'm not sure if this is true of all vendors - as I'm only familiar with Symantec (Nortons).

wait, so if you open the e-mail (but not the attachment), will your computer get infected?

I just got this in my hotmail acct, and I opened it up just to read the message...

This was already covered in OMNI, where it belongs.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/004017.html

Many thanks to Spider for posting this topic here as I read it only minutes before opening my email where I had 2 virus messages. I do not always read OMNI and would never have seen it in time to prevent problems. Thanks!

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[This message has been edited by FOOLISHRUNNER (edited 01-29-2002).]

I had already opened email when I read this in MilesBuzz and was updating my Norton Antivirus getting rid of it quite quickly. This topic (and an occasional other) belongs wherever the most people can find it the fastest.