yahoo

Thursday February 1 5:36 PM ET Computer Virus Says 'Hey You' to AOL Users

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A password-stealing virus that says ''hey you'' instead of ``I love you'' hit users of AOL's (AOL. ) Internet service, a software security firm said on Thursday.

Software security firm McAfee.com Corp. (NasdaqNM:MCAF - news) said on Thursday the virus, which it said spreads through e-mail and installs itself on users' systems, posed a ``medium-risk'' for AOL users, and cautioned them to be careful with attachments to e-mails.

``The most virulent strain, ``APStrojan.qa,'' spreads through email and installs itself on users' systems, while attempting to steal AOL version 4.0 and 5.0 user account names and passwords, and forward them,'' said Mcafee.com in a statement. ``It then attempts to replicate itself to active AOL screen names listed in the infected user's Buddy List,'' it added, referring to AOL's system for users to store frequently used e-mail addresses.

``We take the report seriously and are clearly monitoring the situation but we haven't seen a significant increase in the number of users hit,'' AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said.

He said it's a known virus and has been around for about a year. ``Our top priority is to protect our users and we do that by educating them about how to keep them secure from trojans and viruses.''

Last May, the ``love bug'' hit millions of computers around the world, enticing e-mail recipients to open e-mail attachments with the phrase ``I love you.''

There were no available details on how many AOL users were hit by the ``hey you'' message. AOL said it was not taking any extraordinary precautionary measures.

While variants of the virus have been circulating for nearly a year, McAfee.com said it has recently noticed an increase in infected computers by users who are scanning their personal computers at the McAfee.com site.

This virus may be received by email as an attachment named ''mine.zip,'' with a size of 77,855 bytes and with the subject line ``hey you,'' Mcafee.com said.

The copy within the email forwarded reads, ``hey I finally got my pics scanned...theres like 5 or 6 of them...so just download it and unzip it ... and for you people who don't know how to then scroll down ... tell me what you think of my pics OK?''

AOL Time Warner shares closed down $2.73 to $49.83, as investors showed some disappointment in the newly merged company's fourth quarter results and growth prospects, following the company's financial report on Wednesday.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 01, 2001