MSN Messenger Virus

[lightweight]

Just wanted to alert you to a virus that is doing the rounds on MSN messenger - you'll be chatting to someone you know and you will think they are asking you if you want to see a photo from them - thinking that it is from the person you're talking to (i.e. a trusted source) the obvious thing is to accept the download - however msn will then try to do the same thing to the next people you "chat" to. I spent a couple of hours last night downloading up to date virus software & cleaning my pc. Fortunately it seems to have worked now - but I can see how easily this one would have been spread.

[arussell]

That'll teach you and the Doctor to send porno pictures to each other

[Lion]

I had this one before.. not that hard to get rid of.. just press ctrl alt delete and look for a file that you dont recoginise and then search for the name of the original file that you accepted and delete the two version of it

[James]

I came across something similar recently. My two older children were in Spain, contacting me from an Internet cafe. I received an invitation to accept a short .exe file, which seemed to come from them. When I declined, the invitation was repeated.

When I enquired, my children denied trying to send the file.

Interestingly, it appeared that a third party had been invited to join our chat. However, the invitations, and a series of 'smilies' all seemed to come from my children.

It sounds as if this was a variation on the virus mentioned by lightweight.

[arussell]

There aren't any new messenger viruses doing the rounds at the moment James (although there is an AOL one) - so it must be something that's been around for a while. I seem to remember some months back there was something like this about.