[deepdiver01]

One of my computers has just been wiped clean by a virus.

I recieved an email from a well known and respected friend warning of a virus that will get into your c drive at sector 0 and literally wipe your disc clean.

The contents of the email was correct. In fact about 60 people in the email loop before and after him have been affected to our knowledge.

He did not actually send this email. Somehow, it has grabbed his contact list and sent the email.

After opening the email, I noticed that outlook express started playing up a bit. I shut down the internet connection and did a complete scan with AVG. Nothing came up so I reconnected.

This thing went straight through the firewall, past Windows Defender and AVG 8.5.

I cannot recover the offending email as there is nothing left on the hard drive.

MY WARNING IS THAT IF YOU GET AND EMAIL FROM A TRUSTED CONTACT WARNING OF A THREAT IN THE SUBJECT LINE, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES OPEN THAT EMAIL.

I does seem to trigger the final crash is internet explorer.

Although Outlook express was playing up, there was no other problems while I was using the Firefox browser. It was only when I opened Internet Explorer that the virus took off and started uploading something. As soon as I shut down power (the closest wire), and tried to restart, there was nothing left.

Just a heads up. Luckily in my case it was not my main computer.

[imrui]

Maybe you are using an outdated Outlook? If so, this is what happened to you:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../MS07-003.mspx

Use thunderbird instead..