Discovered on May 8, 2001, the Homepage virus, a.k.a. VBS/VBSWG.X-mm, masquerades as a really cool homepage. The email carrying the worm has an attachment named homepage.HTML.vbs. Those who do not have file extension viewing enabled will see only homepage.HTML - to protect against this simple ruse, enable file extension viewing.

If the attachment, homepage.HTML.vbs, is executed, the worm will mass-mail itself to all recipients listed in any Windows address book. The worm then deletes all the sent messages from the Sent folder and the Deleted Items folder with the subject line "Homepage".

The worm then modifies the registry as an internal indicator to itself that the mailing routine has been performed.

The Homepage worm then attempts to randomly open one of four x-rated web sites targeted in the worm's code.

While the worm does not contain a malicious payload per se, the affect on mail servers can be substantial as can the resulting undesirable public relations from having such a worm sent from your system.