SANS Alert!
Windows Users. Please act to fix and protect your systems this week.
Email viruses are now spreading WITHOUT THE USER OPENING ANY
ATTACHMENT.
Details in the first story in this issue.

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-- 10 May 2000  Email viruses are now spreading WITHOUT THE USER
                 OPENING ANY ATTACHMENT.
Personal computers running Internet Explorer (IE) version 5.0 and/or
Microsoft Office 2000 are vulnerable to virus attacks using most
email
systems, even if the email recipient opens no attachments.  You don't
even have to use IE; just have it installed with the default security
settings.  If you have not closed the hole, you can receive viruses
(and
spread them) by viewing or previewing malicious email without opening
any attachment, or by visiting a malicious web site. The problem is
caused by a programming bug in an Internet Explorer ActiveX control
called scriptlet.typelib.  This is by far the fastest growing virus
distribution problem and ripe for a hugely destructive event - at
least
as large as the ILOVEYOU virus.  Updating your virus detection
software,
while important, is not an effective solution for this problem. You
must
also close the hole.  The hole can be closed in five minutes or less
using tools available at Microsoft's security site:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/ms99-032.asp
The correction script may be run directly from:
http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/iebuild/scriptlet/en/scriptlet.htm
Editor's Note: Thanks to Jimmy Kuo of Network Associates and Nick
FitzGerald of Computer Virus Consulting Ltd. for raising the
visibility
of this dangerous problem.