Re: VIRUS WARNING (dubious) for XYWRITE digest

[Judith Davidsen jdavidsen@xxxxxxxx]

> However, there can also be false alarms. Current version McAfee continues to flag one of the XyList Zip archives from 2000
> (I have all the "back issues" stored on my hard drive), with the message below.
>
> F:\XY-LIST\ARCHIVES\XYLST00.ZIP\XY04.00 ... Found the JS/Kak@M virus !!!
>
> Perhaps there really is something in there, but I think McAfee is reacting to a 7-bit encoded program in that archive, which
> in any event would have to be run through some decoder (XX or UU most likely) before it would even turn into anything other
> than an inert stream of characters.
>
If you do a search in your archive for /kak/ you will find
that in the first half of 2000 we practically crucified a
list member for passing along the kak virus until we
realized it wasn't his fault. I managed to get it, and most
references to it, off my computer, but I seem to recall that
it travels in a header rather than in an attachment.

On the other hand, you might be right that it's a false
alarm: it's supposed to crash your computer on the first of
the month, and if you've had the index since early this
year......

Anyway, Symantic seems to have a fix for it.

Judith Davidsen



> Jordan