MDMA PC virus - Word 95 macro virus 1/1/97

Displays following message:

This virus infects documents and the normal.dot style with a macro called AutoClose. Most of the time this macro becomes active whenever you close files and saves the document, whether you wanted to or not. Also, infected documents are designated as templates (.dot) files and cannot be saved any other way (presumably because they can carry the macro only as a template). The trouble comes on the 1st of the month when the above message appears and nasty things are done to your computer, depending on the operating system (on Win95 the Control Panel is deleted upon reboot).

Once infected, DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER without disinfecting as damage is done upon reboot.

To get rid of virus from a given document:

• remove AutoClose macro from template list
• Select all text and transfer it to a clean document
• remove AutoClose from NORMAL.DOT template (and all others)

To remove virus from system and to watch for future infections, get virus scanning package:

• MacAfee VirusScan
• Symantec
• F-prot - specifically have a Macro Virus scanning program
• Microsoft - have Word Macro to watch out for infected files - ScanProt (look under "Download Driver, Patch or Sample file)

More general virus information can be obtained from the following sites

• Data Fellows (makers of F-Prot)
• IBM Virus Page
• Cornell helpdesk