Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!jln
From: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: New WDEF Strain (repost)
Message-ID: <2102@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 89 22:55:07 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Reply-To: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Organization: Northwestern Univ. Evanston, Il.
Lines: 38

The news about the new WDEF virus could not be much worse.

A new strain has appeared.  A quick examination reveals that it
beeps when it infects a new Desktop file, and some debugging
symbols were removed, but otherwise it is identical to the original
strain.  It appears to have been created by the same miscreant who
created the original version, and it may very well have existed 
just as long as the original version.

Disinfectant 1.4 does NOT recognize the new strain.  I will release
yet another new version (1.5) tonight (I hope) that will deal with
the new strain and hopefully any other strains which might exist.
Of course, I can't guarantee that it will catch everything that
might be out there.

More bad news: We've had so many reports of WDEF infections that
I've given up trying to keep track of all the sitings.  It is
all over the United States, at least.

More bad news: We have reports of two more problems that WDEF
can cause.  It apparently causes 8 meg Macs to crash so
frequently that they are unusable.  It is also completely 
incompatible with the "Virtual" INIT from Connectrix.  We don't
have explanations for these problems yet - we're currently 
getting reports of WDEF problems faster than we can analyze them.

I don't usually let my emotions creep into these public 
announcments about viruses, becasue I feel that they are 
irrelevant.  But I must tell you that I'm angry, depressed, and
overwhelmed.

I have a request: Please don't write to me right now unless it is
very important - hold off for a week or two.  It's getting to the
point where I'm getting mail faster than I can read it, much less
think about it.  I have important work to do that is not getting
done because of it.

John Norstad      Northwestern University     jln@acns.nwu.edu