Virus Alert: Don't Get Smitten By This Love Bug!

Market Wire, May, 2000

GFI, leading developer of e-mail security & anti virus software, is the first to discover a dangerous new email virus, in the form of a love letter entitled "ILOVEYOU". This noxious virus - and any variants - can be blocked by Mail essentials, GFI's email security, content checking and anti-virus gateway.

The new email virus is spreading rapidly. It uses a VB script and sends itself to all recipients in all email address books. It is contained in an email with ILOVEYOU as the Subject with a one- line message ("kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me.") and an attachment, LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.VBS

"This latest discovery is proof that email has become the main way of spreading viruses," said Nick Galea, CEO of GFI.

"With Mail essentials, blocking this virus is easy: Just set Mail essentials to block VBS attachments in the Content Checking tab. This will block and incoming/outgoing infected mail. This way, the Mail essentials resolution will block all viruses of this kind as it will quarantine any attachments using a VB script. This means that Mail essentials will also catch any variants of the Love Letter virus."

If opened, the "Love Letter For You" attachment infects the recipient's computer. This dangerous virus propagates through Microsoft Outlook and the popular chat program called mIRC, and possibly other email systems.

It infects VBS files on the recipient's drives as well as overwriting JPGs and searching for mIRC. If found, the virus inserts a custom script in it to infect other mIRC users and sends itself to every contact in the infected computer's address book. LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU will also try to download an EXE file from four Internet sites.

Mail essentials is a comprehensive email security and management tool that offers the following features, as well as anti-virus:

Content checking for offensive or confidential information. PGP encryption. Anti-spam. of e-mail. Disclaimers. management. Automatic compression of all outbound mail to save bandwidth. Archiving of e-mail to any ODBC database. information can be found at www.gfi.com/mesindex.htm. The full version of Mail essentials is available from $295.

GFI FAX & VOICE has six offices in the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia and Malta, and has a worldwide network of distributors. GFI is the developer of FAXmaker, Mail essentials and LANguard, and has supplied applications to clients such as Microsoft, Sage, London Fire Brigade, BMW, the US IRS, Siemens, Digital, Ericsson, Olivetti, and the USAF. GFI has been named one of 1999's fastest growing software companies for Windows by Microsoft Corp. and CMP Media.