A. Bubbleboy is not just another virus, its the start of a whole new strain of virus. Up till now, to receive a virus from an email you have to actually open an attachment. Bubbleboy changes this and actually infects by just opening the email or previewing in Outlook Express.
Bubbleboy requires Internet Explorer 5 and the Windows Scripting Host (which is built into Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and is an optional add-on for Windows NT 4.0) and only affects English and Spanish installations.
In MS Outlook, this worm requires that you "open" the email. It will not run if using "Preview Pane". In MS Outlook Express, the worm is activated if "Preview Pane" is used. Setting your security level to High in Internet Explorer 5.0 will stop this virus from running.
Microsoft have a patch available from http://www.microsoft.com/security/Bulletins/ms99-032.asp.
Bubble boy is actually fairly harmless, its just changes the registered user and organization and mails itself to every contact in the email address book of MS Outlook. The fear is someone will now create other versions will may delete files etc just by previewing a message!
The actual message looks like:
From: <sender>
Subject: BubbleBoy is back!
Message Body: The BubbleBoy incident, pictures and sounds
http://www.towns.com/dorms/tom/bblboy.htm
