Goner arrives as an email with the subject line: "Hi"

and a message body text: "How are you ? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you
I am in a harry, promise you will love it!"

and the attachment: "gone.scr"

Upon execution of the attachment, Goner searches for a number of security products, including antivirus and personal firewalls, running on the computer. It shuts down and erases the security applications. Goner spreads by sending itself to every email address in the infected computer user's Microsoft Outlook address book. Goner also has the capability to spread via ICQ and IRC networks.

"Like many other virus threats, Goner uses social engineering to induce users to unknowingly activate it," said Ian Hameroff, business manager, security solutions, CA. "Goner can be stopped in its tracks by a combination of common sense and the right tools."

CA's eTrust global antivirus researchers will shortly release a new signature for its award winning antivirus solutions -- eTrust InoculateIT, eTrust Antivirus and eTrust EZ Antivirus. Additional information is available at http://ca.com/virusinfo/.

About Computer Associates

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA) delivers The Software That Manages eBusiness. CA's world-class solutions address all aspects of eBusiness management through industry-leading brands: Unicenter for infrastructure management, BrightStor for storage management, eTrust for security management, CleverPath for portal and business intelligence, AllFusion for application life cycle management, Advantage for data management and application development, and Jasmine for object-oriented database technology. Founded in 1976, CA serves organizations in more than 100 countries, including 99 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit http://ca.com/.

All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

SOURCE: Computer Associates International, Inc.

WEB SITE: http://ca.com/