“The Thursday virus carries a ‘trigger’ date of Dec. 13. When an
infected document is opened on that date, it will attempt to delete
all the files on a user’s ‘c:’ drive, including
subdirectories…”
“Unlike the infamous Melissa virus, which spread by
automatically e-mailing itself across networks, the Thursday
virus is spread when users share documents. However, because it
appears to be spreading quickly, and because of its potentially
destructive and costly payload, AVERT has given it a ‘high-risk’
assessment.”
“…the virus turns off the Macro Warning feature in Word 97. If
a user has a document that contains a macro, and the Macro Warning
feature doesn’t activate, that’s a sign that their system may be
infected, AVERT said.”
“The virus, which also goes by the aliases ‘W97M/Thursday,’ and
‘Thus.A,’ contains a module called ThisDocument. After turning the
macro warning feature off, the module proceeds to infect any Word
documents opened or created on the computer from that point
on.”