Date: May 7, 2005
Subject: Virus Warning - Sober.N

Over the past several days a new virus has been infecting approximately 1 out of every 22 emails and has accounted for 80% of all viruses reported for the past week. The Sober.N virus, the latest variant of the SOBER strain, is designed to bypass security measures by camouflaging itself as a legitimate email. Once a computer has been infected by the Sober.N virus it scans the user's address book and sends itself to all email addresses that it finds. Sober.N also attempts to disable installed security software and allow itself or other viruses unlimited access to infected computers.

To protect yourself against this and other virus security threats please use the following precautions:

1/ Ensure that an effective antivirus program has been installed (ELM recommends Norton Antivirus for corporate computers and AVG Antivirus for home computers), that it is loaded when the computer starts up and that its virus definitions are kept current

2/ Perform a full virus scan of your computer on a regular basis to ensure that no virus was installed in the gap between its creation and discovery, a monthly scan would be an absolute minimum

3/ Be suspicious of all unsolicited emails with attachments (please contact ELM if you have any concern about an email you have received)

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about this or any other issue.

Due to a recent upgrade to our address book you may have inadvertently received this message. If you do not with to receive future ELM Bulletins please send an email to peter@elmcomputers.com and ask that you be removed from our contact list, thank you.