>I'd say it is one, since it propagates itself. It isn't just a trojan horse. But I gather that it doesn't do some of the things traditional viruses do, like attaching itself to executable files, writing to the boot sector, or modifying normal.dot like a Word macro virus. According to some website I don't currently have handy, Norton is working on some sort of fix. But could such a virus be detected by a typical anti-virus program?

It is most definitely a virus, you can't get much more so than this. What starts as email propogation is just the opening volley. It then renames OS dlls, registry entries, and various other files.

It is much more serious that we first suspected here, for those who opened it.