Virus set for Jan. 1, 2000

Although your computer might be inoculated against the Y2K bug, there is a new virus floating about that will change home page settings to pornographic sites and then wipe out hard drives at the millennium moment. The virus--the latest in a series of increasingly flamboyant viruses that prey on vulnerabilities in Microsoft desktop software--is called W32/Mypics.worm and is triggered by the date Jan. 1, 2000. The worm, limited to Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer users, is received as an email attachment disguised as a picture. Once opened, it infects the host computer and attempts to send itself using Microsoft Outlook to up to 50 people in the users_ address book. It also changes the Home page in Internet Explorer to a site containing adult content, Symantec warned in an alert sent out Friday. Symantec, which discovered the virus, rates this as a medium to high-risk virus. But the damage to the unsuspecting user doesn_t truly happen until Jan. 1, 2000. The virus works by masking as a Y2K problem, which will prompt users to reboot. When an infected computer is rebooted, however, the virus will attempt to format the local hard drives and erase all data, Symantec said.