WM97 macro virus

Can anyone suggest a method of disinfecting a Mac (running OS X 10.4.10) that's caught the WM97 macro virus (AKA W97M.Story) from a Word document?

Virex from McAfee will do it, but it's an enterprise product and they don't sell it to one off end users. Their standard one off products appear to be for Windows only. I had an evaluation copy of Virex, but now it's expired and they want me to buy 11 copies (minimum)!

AVG from Grisoft is free and will detect this virus, but again it's only for Windows as far as I can tell.

Several other anti-virus products don't detect Word Macro viruses.

In the past I found this very useful set of instructions, which worked:

http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/its/training/macrovirus/

However, once the Virex trial period expired the Mac has got re-infected despite "Macro virus protection" being ticked in Word Preferences. Fortunately it seems to be with one of the non-damaging versions.

Have a look at this free program:-

http://www.clamxav.com/

Another with a free trial period is Sophos. Just do a Google.

Thanks harryb2448,

I've installed ClamXav and it found a number of infected emails (some junk ones containing some sort of malware e-card), but it did not find the W97M.Story virus that I'm sure is there somewhere.

I've had experience of Sophos a few months ago (under Vista) and it didn't find the macro virus either (it was in a backup file), neither did Kaspersky.

Another problem with Sophos is that it's on 30 day trial, it's another enterprise / business product that costs £135 to buy, which is a bit rich. I need something that will install and stay there. I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for it if necessary.

I have to be honest, I have never used virus software but Intego's VirusBarrier has had, in the past, good reviews.

I have no idea if it can catch your macro or not, though.



Edited to add:

I found an old thread at French forum MacBidouille and that macro was around in 2003! Anyway, in that thread they claim VirusBarrier did not detect it. But VirusBarrier has been updated since. I wonder if you can see the supported virus/macro files the app can detect...


Edited to add more:

From this 2005 MacInTouch reader report, Office 2004 (Part 6):

Brad Engstrand
At our school we just added several new eMac's with Tiger and upgraded to Office2004. Spent much time setting up users and permissions, etc., then migrated to the new machines. Within a couple of days of student use Word began crashing exactly as reported. I did some digging and deleting the Normal template would temporarily fix the issue. I then installed an update of Sophos (our antivirus app) and found the old WM97 macro virus again. Updated all machines and ran the Disinfect and (knock wood) the problem seems to have gone away.

Me? I use TextEdit.

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