Confirmed Virus Could Zap Your PC

It apparently appears as a harmless e-mail titled "Here you have it"

This one is serious, be wary of an otherwise normal email titled: "Here you have it"

(SALEM, Ore.) - Information about a new computer virus affecting email users who rely on Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and other carriers was relayed to Salem-News.com today.

Patricia A. Marshall, CEO of the Spinal Cord Research Foundation for Children, took the time to let us know that this virus represents a real threat to PC's as verified by both Microsoft and Norton. She suggest sending the information to everybody you know who has Access to the Internet.

It apparently appears as a harmless e-mail titled "Here you have it" If you open the file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful....'

Subsequently you stand to lose everything in your personal computer, and the person who sent it to you will gain access to your Name, e-mail and password.

The virus has reportedly been created by a hacker who uses the name 'life owner'.

This is a new virus which reportedly started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software currently offered is not capable of destroying it. Snopes confirmed the information last September.

From Snopes:

Infectious email messages have been circulating and spreading a virus called, "VBMania." If you receive any emails with "Here you have" or "Just for you" in the subject line, please delete these emails immediately.

Don’t open them or click on any links or attachments. You should watch out for these malicious emails both on your DOT computers and on your home computer.

A link to a malicious Web site associated with the virus appears to be inactive, but infected hosts may continue to spread the virus via other means. The files attached to the e-mails are dangerous because they appear to be a PDF or Windows Media (WMV) files but are actually disguised files known as Trojans. After clicking them, the user is prompted to download or execute the virus. When it is run, the virus installs itself on your computer. Once your computer is infected, the virus attempts to send out the same email message to the addresses in your address book. It can also spread through accessible remote machines, mapped drives, and removable media such as thumb drives.

While this specific threat is current and has been reported on Government computer systems, you should always be on the alert for malicious emails. When you receive emails, check to make sure you know the sender before you open it. If you don’t recognize the person in the "from" line of an email, or it seems suspicious for other reasons, delete it. Also, while DOT strives to keep its anti-virus and anti-malware software up-to-date, please make sure your home computers are also protected and have current anti-virus and other security software.