Virus Warning: Missus

Description<BR>
Missus manifests as a female humanoid providing cooking/cleaning
features, and a sitting-room/TV it is a remote hijacker, targeted at
unsuspecting male humanoids. There may be problems with pop-ups.

Variants<BR>
Girlfriend 1.0 was the first variant, targeted at mycash.com, later
versions of Girlfriend exploit the same resources using more
sophisticated methods.<BR>
Live_in (any version) uses different profiles and is targeted at
mywayoflife.com.<BR>
Missus 2.7 is the current variant in which the cooking/cleaning/nookie
features are much less effective but the resource consumption is two
orders of magnitude greater

Also known as<BR>
SWMBO, 'er indoors, the totty, the little woman.

Distribution<BR>
The Girlfriend variants have sometimes been bundled with got-drunk,
went clubbing and chatted_up_sister's_mate. The parasitic forms
(Live-in and Missus) are invariably self-installing, exploiting any
firewall deficiencies to immediately grab Administrator privileges and
closing out any other Administrator access.

What it does Missus is a blended threat and operates phased attack:<BR>
1. It progressively closes all access to any competing products.<BR>
2. It grabs access to all available resources<BR>
3. It uninstalls the "toys and gadgets" folder completely, and then
reprogrammes the firewall to block any related addresses.<BR>
4. It installs "soft furnishings.dll" and "redecorate.vxd" (the
virtual driver being recursed on a 12-month cycle).<BR>
5. It closes down un-wanted processes like pubnight, havefun,
watchfootie etc.<BR>
6. Having achieved the above it spawns new sub-processes to
consolidate its control.<BR>
7. It may install parasitic programmes and spyware like In-Laws 1.0

Privacy violation<BR>
Only for the first few months - after that it prohibits any violation
of its privacy.

Security issues<BR>
Yes, your security of title and tenure is severely threatened by the
prospect of CPA.VXD.

Stability problems<BR>
Very unstable - prone to spontaneous breakdown without cause. Recovery
only possible by allocating ever more resources and granting greater
privileges. These steps are non-reversible.

Removal<BR>
Generally regarded as impossible, although some have succeeded through
faking death or assuming a new identity.

Links<BR>
Only for the first few months - then discouraged or prohibited.