Symantec, the company behind Norton AntiVirus, expects to have a fix for the MelissaW virus by tomorrow. As we reported earlier today, the MelissaW is a new strain of the Melissa virus that poses a threat to users of Office 2001 for the Mac.
“We’re working on a fix for it right now,” David Loomstein, the group product manager of Symantec told MacCentral. “We’ll be doing a patch to our virus engine and will be adding definitions that block MelissaW.”
Norton AntiVirus can already detect the MelissaW virus. But it can’t “squish” it until the fix is available.
Loomstein also recommends deleting any suspicious e-mail before opening. Suspicious being an e-mail similar to the following:
Subject: Important Message From (persons name)
Body: Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-)
Attachment name: Usually: Anniv.DOC
Also, according to the folks at Messagelabs.com, an application service provider, due to the behavior of different mail systems, there may be different attachment names, such as Anniv1.DOC. And MelissaW can also infect other word documents, in which case the attachment name would change appropriately.
Virex maker McAfee.com has updated its own Virus Information Library with information about the new Melissa virus, as well.