A little late on this notice because I've been out of town. This note does underline the importance of running virus software on your machines. ---- Yesterday, we became aware of a particularly nasty new virus called CIH or Chernobyl virus. Much like the old Michelangelo virus, this is a date dependent virus that lurks in machines until a particular date. This virus activates based upon the 26th of a month. Certain strains kick in on April 26th with others on June 26th. Since yesterday, we have found a fair amount of it on campus. The CERT Incident Note IN-99-03 can be viewed at http://www.cert.org/incident_notes/IN-99-03.html . I don't normally throw up red flags on these things, but I have some level of concern over this particular event. Two simple ways of dealing with this virus are to set your system date to April 27th now and then correct it on Tuesday. This does not get rid of the virus, but at least you avoid the date. The other simple method is to leave systems shut down between 11:59 pm on Sunday through 12:01 am on Tuesday. With both of these methods, systems must still be check for the virus. The best way of dealing with this is to find a program that recognizes and cleans it off prior to the 26th.