Question on viruses

[Ketou]

At present i average a virus or two a week being sent to me.

Information from hotmail etc, tells me i must send the full headers and message body to their abuse dept to report it. Fine. I've worked out that I get the full headers and message from the mail poperties, message source.
I ran a test by coping and pasting this text into a new message and sending it to myself. My virus protection software intercepted the incoming mail and edited it.
My question is, does the source code of a mail with a virus attachment act as a virus itself? This was not an attachment I sent to myself but a copy and paste of the text in the message source box. I am not a programmer so don't understand how this works. Could any of you guys enlighten me a little.

Thanks.

Ketou

[cstaylor]

The short answer: some virus scanners look at the text of the email message to determine if it was sent by a virus like Melissa or any of the newer ones. The virus is an attachment, although it can be text too because it's a macro virus, not an executable program (err... directly executable)

More powerful virii are usually applications masked as attachments, like hotgirl.gif.exe, and you don't realize that the file is a program, you run it, and whammo you're infected.

If you're in Japan, Trend Micro's Virusbuster is pretty good.

[Steve Bildermann]

[Ketou]

Thanks guys

I have Norton 2002 so no probs with virii yet.

Just the report procedure and test i made brought up the question of how the whole thing works!!

Thanks again.