The Happy99 virus

[Jeff ALLEN]

>My father's computer recently got a virus through an attachment sent by
>somebody he KNOWS. It seems to be a famous one, called "Happy 1999." As
>soon as he opened the attachment, a firework came up on his screen. Once
>you get it, this virus automatically gets attached to every e-mail you
>send. Thus, you will be sending viruses to people without your knowing
>about it. I don't know the details concerning what "Happy 1999" does to
>your computer besides this, but it is worth a caution not to
>open any attachment by this name, or, according to my father, any which
>ends with .exe or .con.

Yes, Happy99 is a real virus. It always comes as an attachment because
it infects your Winsock file. It has been sweeping across the Internet since
January 99 and has infiltrated many discussion lists, crashing the servers,
and infecting computers of those who receive the message, click
on the attachment and see the wonderful fireworks display.

I am sending a separate message
to Tomoko Wakabayashi on how to remove the virus from the computer.
I've helped several people eradicate Happy99 this past week.

I have been telling many people lately to Never, never open a .exe attached
file. There are some exceptions, but you must really know where you
are getting the file from and verify that they have regular anti-virus
procedures set-up in-house at their institution, before you choose
to open the file.

Best,

Jeff

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Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique
European Language Resources Association (ELRA) &
European Language Resources Distribution Agency (ELDA)
(Agence Européenne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques)
55, rue Brillat-Savarin
75013 Paris FRANCE
Tel: (+33) (0) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) (0) 1.43.13.33.30
mailto:je...@elda.fr
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html