W97M.Forget.A infects the Microsoft Word Normal.dot template and open Word documents. On the 8th day of every month, W97M.Forget.A causes the Office Assistant to display the message:
Today is the day of my sister's birthday don't forget ...
Payload: Office Assistant says the following message:
- HackerNet say's -
Today is the day of my sister's birthday don't forget ...
When opening, closing, or creating a new document while a W97M.Forget.A infected document is active, the Normal.dot template and all open documents are infected.
W97M.Forget.A stealths by overriding the Tools > Macro > Macros... and Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor commands. When choosing any of these commands, a fake error message is displayed:
Can not find application
Every three minutes, W97M.Forget.A checks the current date. If it is the 8th day of any month, the Office Assistant displays the following message:
Today is the day of my sister's birthday don't forget ...
- HackerNet say's - Today is the day of my sister's birthday don't forget ...
Symantec Security Response encourages all users and administrators to adhere to the following basic security "best practices":
Turn off and remove unneeded services. By default, many operating systems install auxiliary services that are not critical, such as an FTP server, telnet, and a Web server. These services are avenues of attack. If they are removed, blended threats have less avenues of attack and you have fewer services to maintain through patch updates.
If a blended threat exploits one or more network services, disable, or block access to, those services until a patch is applied.
Always keep your patch levels up-to-date, especially on computers that host public services and are accessible through the firewall, such as HTTP, FTP, mail, and DNS services (for example, all Windows-based computers should have the current Service Pack installed.). Additionally, please apply any security updates that are mentioned in this writeup, in trusted Security Bulletins, or on vendor Web sites.
Enforce a password policy. Complex passwords make it difficult to crack password files on compromised computers. This helps to prevent or limit damage when a computer is compromised.
Configure your email server to block or remove email that contains file attachments that are commonly used to spread viruses, such as .vbs, .bat, .exe, .pif and .scr files.
Isolate infected computers quickly to prevent further compromising your organization. Perform a forensic analysis and restore the computers using trusted media.
Train employees not to open attachments unless they are expecting them. Also, do not execute software that is downloaded from the Internet unless it has been scanned for viruses. Simply visiting a compromised Web site can cause infection if certain browser vulnerabilities are not patched.
To recover from this infection:
Run LiveUpdate to make sure that you have the most recent virus definitions.
Start Norton AntiVirus (NAV), and run a full system scan, making sure that NAV is set to scan all files.
If any files are detected as infected by W97M.Forget.A, click Repair.
