What is the bubbleboy virus?

A. Bubbleboy is not just another virus, its the start of a wholenew strain of virus. Up till now, to receive a virus from an email you have toactually open an attachment. Bubbleboy changes this and actually infects by justopening the email or previewing in Outlook Express.

Bubbleboy requires Internet Explorer 5 and the Windows Scripting Host (whichis built into Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and is an optional add-on for WindowsNT 4.0) and only affects English and Spanish installations.

In MS Outlook, this worm requires that you "open" the email. Itwill not run if using "Preview Pane". In MS Outlook Express, the wormis activated if "Preview Pane" is used. Setting your security level toHigh in Internet Explorer 5.0 will stop this virus from running.

Microsoft have a patch available from http://www.microsoft.com/security/Bulletins/ms99-032.asp.

Bubble boy is actually fairly harmless, its just changes the registered userand organization and mails itself to every contact in the email address book ofMS Outlook. The fear is someone will now create other versions will may deletefiles etc just by previewing a message!

The actual message looks like:

From:
Subject: BubbleBoy is back!

Message Body: The BubbleBoy incident, pictures and sounds

http://www.towns.com/dorms/tom/bblboy.htm