Combating MyDoom.A in Outlook 2003

I had over 80 e-mails in my inbox when I woke up this morning, most from this wonderful new virus that some schmuck that can't get a girlfriend decided to write in his ample spare time. I hope someone nails this jerk. As you can already tell, this virus thing is really starting to tick me off. Since my e-mail server's antivirus filters have not updated yet, I started fighting it the good-ole-fashioned way: Rules in Outlook 2003.

I set up a rule that I call “Screw MyDoom.A”. I have it check for the following phrases in the message body:

• test
• Test
• Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available.
• The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment.
• The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment.

Any time a new version comes in, I add it to the list. I also have it look for an attachment that is no larger than 23KB. If it meets all these criteria, it automatically deletes the e-mail permanently, and stops processing more rules.

This has been extremely effective in fighting the effects of the virus on my inbox. Having said that, should you use it, I bear no liability for any legitimate mail lost due to this method. If you don't want to risk losing good mail, just delete the itmes, don't delete them permanently.