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21 Oct 04 - 10:07 AM (#1302865) Subject: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: The Fooles Troupe Be warned if you are an accordion fanatic, make sure your shields are up, especially if you insist on using Microsoft products. Just received an email that seemed genuine enough, but it had a big viral payload. Something about 'Irish Accordion Techniques' - I was going to suggest they contact here. Someone allegedly wanted to know about an accordion tape that they bought in Ireland from Waltons. Forgot to specify VHS - but they claimed to be in Canada - why would they contact me here in Australia about finding a local Waltons Store? - allegedly my web site was the only one they could find about accordions!!! - when my website clearly says that I live in Australia. BTW, we used to have Waltons stores everywhere, but it was a local electrical reailer... :-) Saved by Mailwasher! I always skim email in Mailwasher first, but was tricked by not looking carefully at the message size (due to the accordion reference, and going to help!). But it noticed that the 'trigger' for an executable attachment was there... :-) Also Mailwasher attempting to bounce the message got an error that the address was non-existent. If it was genuine, then someone's got a virus anyway, but I suspect it is just a virus. A few years ago I would have taken the trouble to chase the sender up, but with over 100 Spam a day, and nasty viruses everywhere, especially in this message, I am not as nice as I used to be - I protect myself these days - I'm sure if it is a genuine searcher, they will find this site eventually. Once I detected a Virus I just trashed the message! And I don't recollect having any such link claimed in the message on my site... BTW, does anybody have an email adress for 'Waltons' - I would have though they had a web site... Robin |
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21 Oct 04 - 10:32 AM (#1302897) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: MMario so many of the viruses and trojan horses etc these days "spoof" - the address of the "sender" is rarely the user of the computer that sends out the e-mail. Some of the newer ones take random messages from the mailbox on the infected computer - complete with title and then send them back out with virus attached - others just grab a title from the mailbox - |
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21 Oct 04 - 11:05 AM (#1302928) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Dave Bryant Anyone got a virus that buggers up Banjos, Bodhrans, and Kazoos ? |
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21 Oct 04 - 11:25 AM (#1302950) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: BanjoRay Or one that buggers up Bdhrans, Kazoos and Dave Bryant? |
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21 Oct 04 - 02:58 PM (#1303119) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Geoff the Duck Or buggers dave bryant with a kazoo.... :>} Quack!! GtD. |
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21 Oct 04 - 05:51 PM (#1303264) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Susanne (skw) Mudcat is such a friendly, caring environment! :-) Hi Geoff, hi Dave. And why will people still use MS IE? |
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21 Oct 04 - 06:19 PM (#1303294) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Bill Hahn//\\ You should also be aware that there is an e mail going around purporting to be from Citibank---asking you to update your information. Very legit looking---best to delete and to forward it to www.emailspoof@citigroup.com I called them and on their automated voice mail they spoke of this scam and asked that it be forwarded so they can track from whence it came. In fact, you all probably are aware that you should never give out any information in unsolicited e mails even if the logos look legit---banks, brokers, etc; do not do anything via e mail without your prior request. Bill Hahn |
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21 Oct 04 - 09:53 PM (#1303444) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: The Fooles Troupe I used to do all the good citizen things, including forwarding the child porn ads to the Aussie authorities, the scams to the anti scam sites, etc, but after the police told me in an email that they wanted me to stop sending the stuff!!!!, and the 'investigation team' taking so long to get around to looking at the sites that I got emails telling me the sites were not working!!! I just delete it all now, mailwasher recognises the russian sites and just ignores them. With over 100 Spam a day anyway, the amount of time and resources thus 'wasted' was not worth it to me, so I gave up. |
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22 Oct 04 - 08:31 AM (#1303780) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Sandra in Sydney I was pottereing around our public info DB at work yesterday & being curious I opened several of the type of spam that I just delete at home. ps, it was perfectly safe as our firewall had removed the viruses. They are the ones that say Re: (something) or in the case of the ones at work they said Re: VIRUS REMOVED (something) so I knew they were ok to open. Sneaky bastards, they said the messages had been scanned with McAfee or other antivirus product, so innocent souls would be likely to open them!! And out innocent Gatekeeper (who does not use the internet apart from the limited access we have at work behind out gi-normous Government firewall) had sent the automatic reply saying send again cos you had a virus. Here's one (misspelled as is often the case) ............................... re approved infromation Your document. +++ Attachment: No Virus found +++ Bitdefender AntiVirus - www.bitdefender.com KWF Email scanner found a virus in following attachment: Name: information.txt .scr Content type: application/octet-stream Additional information from antivirus: W32/Netsky.p@MM Attachment has been removed by firewall. .................................................. |
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22 Oct 04 - 09:02 AM (#1303811) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: The Fooles Troupe Nothing's 'perfectly safe' - especially if it's a brand new one that the virus scanner is not aware of yet - so, just for you Sandra, Do not open this thread!!!!! |
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22 Oct 04 - 04:01 PM (#1304121) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: belfast I note the words of Susanne(skw) "And why will people still use MS IE?" Can anyone explain in words of one syllable why we shouldn't? As it happens I don't - but probably for the wrong reasons. I assume we're talking about Internet Explorer. |
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22 Oct 04 - 04:47 PM (#1304163) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: GUEST,me "And why will people still use MS IE?" Because Bill gates won, the geeky prick! IE is so rooted into Windows now. The update feature works through it as do many other things in Windows. I don't want to run more than one browser on my `puter. Netscape long ago became such a memory hog and took so long to boot up it is no longer a viable option. Mozilla or Firefox may well be desirable alternatives and if I ran a Mac I would certainly use them. But on my PC running WinXP, Internet Explorer is already there. Turn off Javascript and run Spyware detection/blockers and well as updated antivirus software and that will have to do. I mean, how much time buggering around with security are we expected to deal with? Soon there'll be no time left to do anything else. Once again a useful resource that technology provided got fucked up. No wonder we can't do anything useful anymore. |
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22 Oct 04 - 09:10 PM (#1304371) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: The Fooles Troupe And I still need to use an external download controller package anyway! Microsoft was too lazy/stupid to even emulate the old 'pre-MSDOS' download controls that allowed you to auto restart downloads if you logged off and on - ah! the days of the old BBSes... When I was much younger, the 'technical twiddling' was interesting in itself - now it's just a bloody pain that gets in the way of doing things useful! And we're only wasting all this time and money buggering around with security cause Bill was too bloody stupid to do things right in the first place anyway! It certainly wasn't ignorance or lack of resources... Robin |
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22 Oct 04 - 09:38 PM (#1304393) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Little Hawk I get a seemingly endless stream of bogus emails purporting to come from Ebay, Paypal, or Citibank, plus some other banking outfit that I do not belong to. They look legit, but they are all attempts to get my personal ID information and rob me. I forward them to the security branch of the original outfit, such as... spoof@paypal.com and spoof@ebay.com and I dearly hope they are able to track these people down and prosecute them. If I was in charge of this matter and I caught any such people I would transport them to a penal colony on some small island and have them work damned hard until they had paid back what they have robbed from others. In some cases, that might take quite awhile. |
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23 Oct 04 - 02:51 AM (#1304567) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Bonnie Shaljean Guest "me" - I was concerned about the effects of having two browsers on my Windows-entrenched puter too, but finally downloaded Firefox (which is free, from mozilla.org) and their email programme Thunderbird (ditto). There have been no problems whatever - I simply don't open IE anymore, though it's still functional. So there IS an alternative to The Geek, and if I need to use IE for any reason (haven't found one yet) it's just a matter of clicking on it. Firefox's security options are easy to get at, and the first thing I did was turn off Javascript and block popups. Give it a try, because you can always uninstall. It's not like having two operating systems. Robin - I don't know Walton's email address but their snailmail is: Walton's Music, 2 - 5 North Frederick Street, Dublin 1, Ireland. |
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23 Oct 04 - 03:06 AM (#1304573) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Bonnie Shaljean The other security feature that I like about Firefox (who are NOT paying me to advertise them, I promise) is that it has an option "Allow websites to install software" which you can untick, thus stopping illicit downloads - though you have to remember to enable it if you're installing a download you want. You can also block images from being loaded, and there's a facility for naming "safe sites" which are to be allowed in. |
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23 Oct 04 - 03:10 AM (#1304576) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: JennyO I got one of those Citibank scam letters today. It was still sitting in my deleted file, so I have now forwarded it on to the address Bill H gave. |
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23 Oct 04 - 11:55 AM (#1304813) Subject: RE: Tech: Spreading Viruses Trick From: Sandra in Sydney I just use the wonderful Mozilla junk mail detector to remove all emails from banks as I don't have a bank account. However this also meant that the time my credit union sent me some marketing guff, I marked it as junk, too. Which means the next piece of guff from the CU will also be automatically marked as junk, too. sandra, another Mozilla fan |