IP: SirCam and Mac users -- why you shouldn't use Outlook

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> > SirCam virus and the Mac: a follow-up
> >
> > Yesterday, we reported that SirCam virus/worm could indirectly affect Mac 
> > users by flooding a mailbox with mail sent from PC users infected with 
> > the virus. We received several reader replies on this matter:
> >
> >
> > It gets worse Gedeon Maheux (of The Iconfactory) writes: "According to 
> > Symantec, Sircam not only gets its emails from people's address books, 
> > but also from the cache files of web pages stored on the infected 
> > computers. This further increases the odds of getting infected email. 
> > Like MacFixIt, The Iconfactory is getting just slammed by this."
> >
> > SirCam and confidential documents Another MacFixIt reader found: "This 
> > virus explains why starting yesterday I began receiving emails from a 
> > business competitor of mine. There are attachments to the emails that 
> > contain business correspondence of my competitor computer. This 
> > correspondence contains price quotes, customer names and addresses etc.! 
> > [To read the files, I had to decode the attachment using YA-Decoder. I 
> > then could open the decoded attachment in Virtual PC 4, using WordPad, on 
> > a disk image especially created to open unknown files.]"
> >
> > SirCam and Virtual PC Frank Hatcher cautions that the virus can affect 
> > Mac users if they run Virtual PC or other PC emulator software. He 
> > writes: "My wife got the worm via an email from a friend as a xls 
> > attachment. When she tried to open it a message popped up that said the 
> > file was a windows application file. So she opened our Virtual PC program 
> > and tried to open it there. Well it attached itself to the SirC32.exe 
> > application and essentially made the VPC drives unusable. I had to trash 
> > the whole VPC folder. During the contamination she noticed that the 
> > windows OE program started up. My guess is that the worm was trying to 
> > send out email - fortunately we only use the Mac OE and had no addresses 
> > in the windows version."
> >
> >
> > Although some users have claimed that the virus can directly corrupt 
> > files on a Mac, Symantec contends (and we concur) that this is not possible.



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