The Virus is Getting Trickier

[gwpriester]

I just received the Hello, How are you, I'd love to destroy your computer with my infected attachment message, but this time it got past VirusScan, which has caught the previous 3 dozen or so messages (I'm not kidding).

The file extension had a double extension, something like iwanttocrippleyourcomputer.zip.zip

This was mentioned in one of the other threads but beware of any attachment with a double extension.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

to rub elm beehives

[gwpriester]

I just received the Hello, How are you, I'd love to destroy your computer with my infected attachment message, but this time it got past VirusScan, which has caught the previous 3 dozen or so messages (I'm not kidding).

The file extension had a double extension, something like iwanttocrippleyourcomputer.zip.zip

This was mentioned in one of the other threads but beware of any attachment with a double extension.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

to rub elm beehives

[caraman1]

Is this the one that asks for your advice? I've received about 10 of them in the last 24 hours.

The attachments I've received have had an extension of *.doc.zlo, the name of the file has been different every time and the file size has ranged from 30k to 700k. Real nice with my 28.8k dialup...

Can't these clowns find something better to do?

Dennis

<a href=http://www.djart.com>DJArt & Design</a>

[gwpriester]

Dennis

Most of the clowns are inadvertant clowns who are not even aware they are being used to send more messages. They either don't have Virus protection software, or bought some years ago and have never bothered to update their software.

The virus takes actual message Subject messages and reuses them. Daniel Will Harris said it can also locate JPEG and GIF images and include them in the attachment.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

to rub elm beehives

[caraman1]

I meant the clowns that write these worms not the unsuspecting souls who unknowingly propagate them....what a waste of talent!

Hey, I've been meaning to ask, what does "to rub elm beehives" mean?

Dennis

<a href=http://www.djart.com>DJArt & Design</a>

[roman]

I got 10 from the same e-mail addres (.sk domain). Plus one from other person which was 4 mb file plus with virus attached to it. It takes any file from infected machine and adds itself to it. So imagine it can also send some private and confidental data from infected machine. Good thing is is that nobody in SK would ask me for advice in english so it's identifiable quite easily.

[Klaus Nordby]

I got one, too - with a double "xls.pif" extension.

The originators of these destructive programs are NOT "clowns"! They are vicious nihilists, taking sick joy in their ability to harm the lives and property of - to them - totally unknown people.


K

[This message was edited by Klaus Nordby on July 24, 2001 at 19:40.]

[williama]

The newest one doing the rounds includes it's own SMTP code, so it can send emails without them showing up in your sent items box. It also picks a random file from your hard disk, and sends it as an attachment.

I use ZoneAlarm (http://www.zonelabs.com/). It's a free firewall app, that will also wrap up any potentially harmful email attachments, and give you a warning if you try to open them.

MS Outlook (not Outlook Express), has two ways of protecting you. There's an AutoPreview that shows the first three lines of any unread message, so you can easily delete any funny looking ones right there and then. I also read my emails in the preview pane, rather than opening them in their own window. This stops any embedded JavaScript in HTML messages from being run, and gives you an extra level of protection.

It's no use having a virus protector if you don't keep it up to date. Mine (Norton) tells me to do that every 14 days, I also do an update when news of a new virus starts doing the rounds.

I used to provide tech support for a mid-size company, and spent too much of my time disinfecting other peoples machines, until I went into the BIOS settings and took the floppy drive out of the boot sequence. People kept reinfecting machines right after I'd cleaned them. It's easy to put the floppy drive back into the boot sequence, in the RARE instances that you need to do that, and it's one more line of defence.


Happily virus free for the past 10 years, even though they've tried to get onto my machine many times.

[Ross Macintosh]

As William writes, the newest ones can attach any document it finds and send that out along with its nasty code. Yesterday at our office we received one from an engineering firm we work with. Its attachment was a confidential internal document and we recognized it as such. There new problem is that that document was sent out to everyone in their address book! The true 'costs' of this virus will probably never be known.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[dk_art]

I just got this virus as an attachment in my yahoo mail. It's extension was .doc.bat ....... Needless to say I deleted the mail [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]

David K