T W Moran (below) is correct in both his diagnosis and
recommendations.

As we all know genuine museum-l postings have to be confirmed by the
originator, but currently there seem to be a lot of things arriving in
in-boxes with fake origination addresses (as with the one I checked out a
couple of days ago).

Well over 90% of the current common viruses now seem to  be (1) specific
to Microsoft systems, and above all the MS Outlook Address Book and
(2) mail themselves out to addresses found in the address book without the
PC owner knowing what is happening.  At the very  least everyone needs to
have an up to date subscription to a virus scanning & protection service,
and update this at least once a week through an on-line down-load, and I
agree that a switch from Outlook is the next and even stronger line of
defence (especially as there are now several arguably much better e-mail
systems available free of charge for those working in the educational or
cultural sectors, even if you decided that you have to stick with Windows
operating systems.

So far as the jdbgmgr.exe virus itself is concerned, this is a virus in the
technical sense and does seem to be transmitting itself more or less
randomly.  However it is classified as a basically harmless hoax - as one
Museum-L lister pointed out a couple of days ago.  The only damage is if
anyone follows the "anti-virus" instructions in the hoax message
itself.  This has in fact been doing the rounds for more than a year - see
the Symantec (Norton anti-virus) Security Response write up for more
details:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/jdbgmgr.exe.file.hoax.html



Patrick Boylan


======================================================

On Sat, 11 May 2002, T W Moran wrote:

>   I have received every post form Museum-l. Not one came through with a
> virus.
>         The virus in question uses Outlook Express's address book to send it
> self and to hide where it comes from.
>         The virus may well reside on a list menber's computer and is being sent
> out every time the connect to the net.
>         I have Norton's virus protection, I do not use Outlook Express and soon
> I will not even be using windows as my OS.
>         UNIX is far more stable than any windows product and almost virus
> impregnable.
>                         Tw
>
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Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).