The left-hand side consists of the lyrics to the song 'Virus Alert' by 'Weird Al' Yankovic (I refuse to be held responsible if the song gets stuck in anyone's head). To the best of my knowledge, the virus report on the right-hand side contains no errors of fact (all the URLs are real, the procedures are represented faithfully, etc.).
Hey, everyone, listen up, your attention if you please.
Really want to give you a warning
'Cause I found out this morning
'Bout a dangerous, insidious computer virus.
If you should get an e-mail with the subject 'Stinky Cheese',
Better not go taking your chances.
Under no circumstances
Should you open it or else it will
Translate your documents into Swahili,
Make your TV record 'Gigli',
Neuter your pets and give your laundry static cling.
(Look out!) It's gonna make your computer screen freeze,
(Look out!) Erase the Easter eggs off your DVDs,
(Look out!) Erase your hard drive and your backups too,
And the hard drive of anyone related to you.
Virus alert!
Delete immediately before someone gets hurt.
Forward this message on to everybody.
Soon, very soon, it will make all the paint peel off your walls.
It'll make your keyboard all sticky,
Give your poodle a hickey,
And invest your cash in stock in Euro Disney.
Then it will tie up your phone making crank long-distance calls.
It'll set your clocks back an hour
And start hogging the shower,
So just trash it now, or else it will
Decide to give you a permanent wedgie,
Legally change your name to Reggie,
Even mess up the pH balance in your pool.
(Look out!) It's gonna melt your face right off your skull
(Look out!) And make your iPod only play Jethro Tull
(Look out!) And tell you knock-knock jokes while you're tryin' to sleep
(Look out!) And make you physically attracted to sheep,
(Look out!) Steal your identity and your credit cards,
(Look out!) Buy you a warehouse full of pink leotards,
(Look out!) Then cause a major rift in time and space
And leave a bunch of Twinkie wrappers all over the place.
That's right, it's a...
Virus alert.
Delete immediately before someone gets hurt.
Forward this message on to everybody.
Virus alert!
Delete immediately before someone gets hurt.
Forward this message on to everybody.
Warn all your friends. Send this to everybody.
Tell everyone you know. Tell everybody now.
If you get infected, you'll wish you had never been born,
So before it e-mails your grandmother all of your porn,
Turn off your computer and make sure it powers down.
Drop it in a 43-foot hole in the ground.
Bury it completely - rocks and boulders should be fine -
Then burn all the clothes you may have worn any time you were online.
Virus alert!
Delete immediately before someone gets hurt.
Forward this message on to everybody.
Virus alert!
Delete immediately before someone gets hurt.
Forward this message on to everybody.
Virus alert!
Delete immediately before someone gets hurt.
Forward this message on to everybody.
Warn all your friends. Send this to everybody.
Tell everyone you know. Tell everybody now.
What are you waiting for?
Just hurry up and forward this to every single person that you know.
Hit... 'Send' ... right... now.
Virus oldie: 'Kak' (for OE)
HISTORY:
Long after the older early-'eighties boot sector virus Elk Cloner
by young Rich Skrenta (Apple II) and later Brain, e-mail viruses
began sweeping our planet: Melissa, Love Bug (or 'I Love You'),
and many more (today, mostly lame ones).
Then Bubbleboy served as proof of concept for a worm spreading
very easily over e-mail (in OE) without even need for an attachment
- deemed very eerie indeed. The first large-scale hit to use the OE
vulnerability was Wscript.KAKWorm, or VBS_KAKWorm - usually just
called Kak.
TO USE:
Just preview one infected e-mail in Microsoft OE. You only reboot,
at your leisure, and zap - you're done. You'll deliver worm-ridden
Javascript fun via your new OE signature file, kak.htm . Share and
enjoy!
You'll also get a free evening reboot at about eighteen-hundred
hours every day, with a 'Driver Memory Error' yelling at you loudly:
'Kagou-Anti-Kro$oft says not today!'
UNINSTALLING/REMEDY:
Unlike Bliss and its '--bliss-uninfect-files-please', with Kak you'll
need to use, e.g., the Symantec removal tool or try manually removing
the evil on your computer, unfortunately.
Here's how you should do the latter (summary):
Do not reboot during this procedure, or you need to start over.
It's probably a good idea to delete every e-mail in your OE folders
carrying the Kak worm.
Kak's put stuff in the batch file that tells your computer what to
run automatically on start-up, but it's made a backup of your
original batch file. You must copy the good version (i.e.,
C:\AE.KAK) over the wormy one (or delete the dodgy lines you see in
there).
Destroy 'KAK.HTA', found under C:\windows and in your 'Windows
Startup' group. Delete the .HTA temp file in C:\windows\system too
(it'll be randomly named, like '34.HTA').
Use REGEDIT; look for your
'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows \Currentversion\Run\cAg0u'
registry entry. Junk that key.
Under 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\Software' you'll have OE keys.
There should be a 'signatures\Default Signature' OE entry. Junk
this one too.
That's it. You're done.
PREVENTION:
Turn off scripting.
Pay the 'good guys' through your nose (you'll likely need to shell
out goodly sums) to sell you some fucking old anti-virus program.
Or, to DIY instead, browse http://oreilly.com/ .
Ideally, remove IE, OE, Outlook, and so on. Or at least seek out
one of the patches. Heed this warning: Most or all links for these
(such as www.microsoft.com/technet/ie/tools/scrpteye.asp) are not
only beyond elderly but dead. Why? Because the bloody greedy
Microsoft yahoos need and rely on you. See, they figure no-one
would be weird enough to 'upgrade' from choice - surely you'd need
to be loony to run Vista voluntarily.
You know, you really ought to forego every vestige of Windows anyway.
Hell, get _any_ real operating system. Truly, it's long overdue.
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