F-Secure Virus Descriptions : Ping.A
W97M/Ping.A virus infects when open documents. The virus payload
consists of pinging to four Internet sites with a big buffer size,
until it is interrupted. The virus hides this process.
Ping.A does not spread automatically over e-mail, unlike the B
variant.
W97M/Ping.B (also known as Syndicate.A) is a macro virus, related to
the famous Melissa virus.
Ping.B spreads in Word documents and transfers itself via e-mail,
using Microsoft Outlook. It sends email to 69 first aliases listed in
the Outlook Address Book. This is done only once per machine, during
initial infection.
The messages look like this:
From: (name of infected user) Subject: Fun and games from
(name of infected user) To: (69 names from alias list)
Hi! Check out this neat doc I found on the Internet!
Attachment: (random document infected with Syndicate)
Do notice that Syndicate can arrive in any document, not necessarily
just in the DADDYS~1.DOC, XXXPASS.DOC or SERIALZ.DOC files it was
initally distributed in.
Syndicate also sends an additional e-mail:
To: Project1@nym.alias.net Subject: "Guess whos infected:
(name of infected user)
infected!
Attachment: (the same document as above)
The Project1@nym.alias.net is an anonymous e-mail address which can
not be traced back to its owner.
The virus contains these comments that are never shown to the user:
'W97M/Project1 by Patient Zero -(The Syndicate)- circa 1999 'The
Syndicate: underground to the underground. 'Greets to Kwyjibo and the
CodeBreakers: Hey, dont we know each other? ;-)
This virus was posted to many newsgroups (including alt.sex,
alt.sex.animals and alt.binaries.warez) on the 30th and 31st of March
1999. The files that were posted were called DADDYS~1.DOC, XXXPASS.DOC
and SERIALZ.DOC. The messages were posted from this account: Secret
Squirrel <squirrel@echelon.alias.net>
[Analysis: Katrin Tocheva and Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure]
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