A new and nasty way to flood networks with spam

✍ Scribed by Helen Meyer

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 252 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-4048
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-4048(97)80811-5

✦ Synopsis

Microsoft Word. That means there are more ways for destructive code to get into Word documents potentially undetected. When Word documents are stored, macros occasionally are corrupted, according to antivirus researchers. If the macro includes a virus planted by a hacker, that virus is slightly altered. Sometimes, the inadvertent change launches a new virus strain. John Wheat from the NCSA's anti-virus laboratory said that when the NCSA lab replicates a virus 500 or 600 times for study, each copy should be identical, but when you look they are not. He believes that the viruses are caused by something "deep down in the core of Microsoft Word -how it handles macros". A Microsoft spokesman said that the company has never received complaints about 'good' macros being corrupted. He said that Microsoft believes virus authors create code that periodically mutates. The Symantec AntiVirus Research Center estimates that 70% of mew macro viruses are created by inadvertent file corruption that is caused by a glitch in the Microsoft environment. IBM's anti-virus research centre doesn't believe inadvertent mutation is the major cause of new viruses. Computerworld, September 29, 1997, p. 1, 16.