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08 Feb 2000

Sophos uncovers new Visio macro viruses

Not yet considered a threat...

SYDNEY - Sophos, the world's leader in network-ready anti-virus software, has announced the discovery of the first macro viruses to target Visio drawings.

VM5/Radiant-A (also known as VIS5/RadiantAngels) and VM5/Unstable-A (also known as V2KM/Unstable, Visio2000.Unstable and Visio2K.Unstable) are being analysed by Sophos virus researchers in the Sophos virus labs. Neither has been reported from the wild, and they are not yet considered a significant threat.

Detection for these viruses will be included in a future version of Sophos Anti-Virus.

Microsoft acquired Visio Corp, which develops business drawing and diagramming software, last month (January). The Visio product incorporates the Visual Basic for Applications macro language also found in Microsoft's Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Project products.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.