Virus targets online account passwords
From New York Post
A version of the ILOVEYOU virus crafted to gather assets from on-line bank accounts has hit UBS. The virus, dubbed "VBS/Lovletter/bd" was unleashed in Switzerland on Tuesday and had moved to the U.S. by yesterday. Like the earlier version this one worked through an attachment. In this case the message said the attachment was a resume and has a subject line reading "Knowledge Worker, Zurich," in German. When users read the fake resume the virus ran a program entitled "hcheck.exe" that scanned the hard drive for signs of the UBS banking software. If the program found UBS account passwords it e-mailed them to free e-mail accounts at excite.com, netscape.net and mailcity.com. Finally, the program installed a Trojan horse program to record users' keystrokes for future use before it erasing itself. Investigators believe the virus was crafted by UBS insiders because it was targeted to specific users. UBS said that no customer lost money.

Second Putnam exec indicted
From Boston Herald
The second of the pair of Putnam executives accused of stealing $78,900 from the fund company was indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy and wire fraud charges yesterday. Paul G. Murphy, 38, of Norton, Massachusetts is accused of creating a false email to lure a lower ranking employee to wire the funds from an internal Putnam account to a retail account at Vanguard. Last month Robin F. Kelly, 38, of Pembroke, Massachusetts pleaded guilty one count of conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud. Both employees worked in Putnam's control division.

Large Cap Growth funds return to Earth
From Wall Street Journal
After three years of outperformance, the average large cap growth fund is reverting to the mean. The three-year returns for this group from 1997 to 1999 averaged 32.82%, according to Lipper. So far this year he group has gained just 1.42 percent. Especially hard hit are funds from Janus and Alger, says the article. 

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