Whats With the Spam ?
Sergeant Bilko
haven't opened any of them - alarmed about the Red Worm virus type thing.
all the re: blah, blah, blah
Jim Elbrecht
>I see these double posts on every ng I read - what the hell is going on ? I
>haven't opened any of them - alarmed about the Red Worm virus type thing.
I think it could be one of Worldnet's servers stuttering. I don't see
any double posts here. [and if it was SPAM, RR wouldn't pass it
up.<g>]
If you mean those odd-ball things that start with "re: xxx" and all
have followups set to news.admin.net-abuse.email -- they are just the
regular trolls who have been attacking that newsgroup & crossposting
to hell & back to disrupt the nanae group. They seem to have found a
way to at least be seen by those who have all crossposts to nanae
killed. [another benefit is if anyone asks here what they are about--
the followup goes to nanae instead of here-- good for us-- bad for
nanae]
BTW- I think one Red Worm is a Linux critter and another attacks
Win-NT & Win-2000- so far none are after my antique W98---
Sircam is the critter that seems to be having great success in the
wild. I've been emailed 4 copies of that one this month-- 2 more than
all the viruses I've been sent in 5 yrs.
Jim
Tom Hand
"Jim Elbrecht" <jelb...@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
news:5nhemts632s4eac0h...@4ax.com...
I am usually quite cautious about computer viruses but I picked up that
W32.Sircam worm that was going around a couple of weeks ago. It came as a
pif attachment to an email ostensibly sent by the owner of a company that I
regularly do business with, with what used to be his regular email address
although he currently uses a different one. Unthinking I double clicked on
the attachment but it didn't open, so I ignored it and forgot about it, not
thinking much more than it must be an invalid file format. About two days
later I started receiving dozens of emails from people telling me that my
computer was infected and that I had forwarded the worm to them.
Fortunately Symantec had posted a program on their web site that easily
cleaned up my machine (the program found twenty instances of the worm in my
files and three changes to my registry). If you think that you may have
picked up that one you should download and run the Symantec program because
if you do nothing the worm is designed to reformat your hard disk sometime
in October, not to mention all the aggravation you will be causing other
people by forwarding the worm to them.
aMAZon
Thanks for the pointers re: nanae. I've noticed the stupid things
in just about every non-moderated newsgroup I read, but didn't
think to check the headers.
--
aMAZon
zesz...@worldnet.att.net
"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
Sergeant Bilko
Tom Hand <tro...@altavista.com> wrote in message
news:HvW97.799$q5.6...@newsfeed1.thebiz.net...
Jim Elbrecht
-snip-
>> Sircam is the critter that seems to be having great success in the
>> wild. I've been emailed 4 copies of that one this month-- 2 more than
>> all the viruses I've been sent in 5 yrs.
>>
>> Jim
>
>I am usually quite cautious about computer viruses but I picked up that
>W32.Sircam worm that was going around a couple of weeks ago. It came as a
>pif attachment to an email ostensibly sent by the owner of a company that I
>regularly do business with, with what used to be his regular email address
>although he currently uses a different one. Unthinking I double clicked on
>the attachment but it didn't open, so I ignored it and forgot about it, not
>thinking much more than it must be an invalid file format. About two days
>later I started receiving dozens of emails from people telling me that my
>computer was infected and that I had forwarded the worm to them.
I'm not a virus geek-- but this one deserves some respect. The idea
of using existing real people *and* real subject lines to send it out
makes it particularly appealing to the unwary. The first one I got
was a reply to a 2 yr old post to a history email list. I was
****very**** tempted to click on whateverthenamewas.doc.bat but
Providence slapped me up aside the head just at the last minute. The
double suffix made me curious enough to virus-scan it instead of just
deleting it or emailing the sender to ask what it was.
So my first intro to Sircam was just a close call. Fore-warned,
I've spotted 3 more. I don't think I would pass it on because it
uses OE & Netscape and I don't -- but if I did contract it could mess
things up a bit on my own system.
Another thing it takes advantage of is the MS default of not showing
complete file extensions. By default 'nastyvirus.bmp.exe' looks
like 'nastyvirus.bmp' on a W98 or ME computer. And everyone 'knows'
you can't get a virus from a .bmp. [probably not completely true-- but
one of those 'common knowledge' things.]
I would advise everyone with Windows to go to my computer and see that
'hide known file extensions' is *not* checked in their View menu. [if
you just look at your C: drive you should see autoexec.bat,
command.com, config.sys etc-- instead of just autoexec, command,
config, etc. Go to view, folder options, view to change it-- and hit
'make all folders look the same'.
I still scan any file I receive that I want to open- but at least I
can save the effort of scanning any with double extensions.
>Fortunately Symantec had posted a program on their web site that easily
>cleaned up my machine (the program found twenty instances of the worm in my
>files and three changes to my registry). If you think that you may have
>picked up that one you should download and run the Symantec program because
I think Symantec has a free trial-- but there are a few very good
permanently free anti-virus programs, too. So there's no reason for
anyone not to have one on their system-- but if the thought of dl'ing
one is even too much effort, the Trend Virus housecalls site will scan
your system while you're online. [Some other vendors offer the same
thing, but I don't know their url offhand]
Trend is at
http://www.antivirus.com
Apologies for the possibly off-topic post, but the introduction of a
virus to anyone's system who might have *your* email address in their
address book becomes a *community* problem in short order. Recently
the genealogy & history email lists have proven that.
Anything we can to delay the inevitable is worthwhile.
Jim
Tom Hand
>
> I think Symantec has a free trial-- but there are a few very good
> permanently free anti-virus programs, too. So there's no reason for
> anyone not to have one on their system--
The Symantec program was not a free trial of their anti-virus program, it
was a free download of a program to purge that specific virus from your
computer. As for anti-virus programs, wouldn't they have to have the
specific virus definition already installed in order to be effective? If
you are among first to be sent virus, as I believe I was in the case of
the Sircam worm, I don't think they would recognize it.
Sergeant Bilko
>
>
Absolutely no apologies necessary. I really appreciate your response - and
since I started the thread I oughta have something to saya about it <g>
Thanks again.
Sarge