These are two very old viruses which we are reporting again today. Honestly one would think these two would have run their course long ago. Yet I personally still see them passing through our mail servers in numbers which can only indicate many people are still infected.
Example: On of a single mail server which moves an average of 150,000 emails daily. This machine traps an average of 350 per day just these two viruses listed below. These are already off the threat list. Since there are too many good free tools this makes no sense. Or people either think they are protected and it has been disabled.
What I find the most interesting here is there are many removal tools for this infection including MS adding it in their mal-ware removal tool. Yet what explains still seeing these numbers. It seems people are still not using any proper means of protection, or it is managing to hide. Perhaps people simply do not care if it does not seem to bother their system.
Due to a decreased rate of submissions, Symantec Security Response has downgraded W32.Netsky.D@mm from a Category 3 to a Category 2 as of October 27, 2004. W32.Netsky.D@mm is a mass-mailing worm that is a variant of W32.Netsky.C@mm. The worm scans drives C through Z for email addresses and sends itself to those that are found.
The Subject, Body, and Attachment names vary. The attachment will have a .pif file extension. As of March 22, 2004, due to an increase in submission rate, Symantec Security Response has upgraded W32.Netsky.P@mm (also known as W32.Netsky.Q@mm) to a Category 3 level threat from a Category 2 threat. W32.Netsky.P@mm is a mass-mailing worm that uses its own SMTP engine to send itself to the email addresses it finds when scanning the hard drives and mapped drives. The worm also tries to spread through various file-sharing programs by copying itself into various shared folders.
The From line of the email is spoofed, and its Subject line and message body of the email vary. The attachment name varies with the .exe, .pif, .scr, or .zip file extension.
Removal Tool: