“The virus, called the “Thursday” or W97M/Thurs.A virus, was
first discovered nearly two weeks ago. It wasn’t given much notice
until the last two days, when it was reported at financial
institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland,
France, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Latvia and
Poland.
About 5,000 seats have been infected so far.
The Word 97-based virus carries a payload that will try to
delete all files on a user’s C: drive on the trigger date, Dec. 13.
It does not appear as though it will do any damage until that day,
which oddly enough falls on a Monday this year.”
“Network Associates… upgraded its warning on the virus from
‘medium’ to ‘high risk’ after it was reported at the financial
institutions. Only three other viruses — Melissa,
CIH/Chernobyl and ExplorerZip — have received a ‘high risk’ rating
over the last year.
Users will see no obvious indications that a document has been
infected. The macro virus is limited so far to Word 97, or
possibly newer versions of Microsoft Corp.’s… word processing
application. If it is not detected, it can cause the deletion
of all files on the C: drive, including subdirectories.”