Re: [aroid-l] virused emails
- Subject: Re: [aroid-l] virused emails
- From: S*@aol.com
- Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 09:32:34 EDT
Julius, it was dismaying to learn that you had this problem. Your pleas for
all to obtain needed virus protection should be heeded!
One of the strange things about many of these new viruses is the abilty to
"spoof" the sender's address so that it looks like it is from someone you
know when in fact it could actually be sent from some distant person you have
never connected with. That unknown person may indeed have the linking
individual's email address on their computer. The virus picks up a random
address on the infected machine and uses it to send out its message so that
it looks like your trusted friend was the person who sent it to you. This is
the hacker's way of covering the viruses trail and it is very effective since
it is most difficult to determine who actually has the virused machine when
there is a high degree of spoofing going on. In addition some of these
viruses drop a payload that copies all your keystrokes and opens a hidden
port on your computer so it can send whatever you are typing to the hacker
who can then use other software to extract vital bits of information such as
passwords and credit card numbers. The truely malicious new bugbear virus
does this and it will also prevent your virus protection software from even
intercepting it. It originated from somewhere in Indonesia, a place rife with
credit card thieves. Go to any major virus protection software web site to
learn more about how these nasty things operate. Hopefully the information
there will put the fear in you to get your virus software upgraded and keep
it that way. Unfortunately, it takes a fair amount of work to manage all this
upgrading and patching, and most people get too complacent about these things
or do not know how to do it themselves.
Donna
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Alan Galloway <alan_galloway@ncsu.edu>
> To: <aroid-l@lists.ncsu.edu>
> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 6:28 AM
> Subject: Re: [aroid-l] virused emails
>
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> I`m back---Alan, thanks for clarifying the below.
> In an attempt to let others know what had befallen my comp., let me tell
> you that my comp. was recently upgraded from Windows 95 to 98, the Norton
> virus protection from W/95 could not be transfered from W/95 to W/98, we
> were NOT informed of this whan the upgrade was made, so not one, but FIVE
> virus' quickly infected my comp.; the worst was the 'bugbear', others were
> 'hooker', 'eikem', 'klenz', and 'badtrans'. These came in disguised as a
> letter with a subject line 'Monroe Birdsey Award', so they did 'fool' me.
> They were sent by a trojan-type virus via a trusted member of this list to
> me, he had no way to know that his comp. was doing it (it would be
> interesting to find out where HE got it from!!). It cost me dearly in
> time and $$ to fix my comp., and I can only hope not many on this list were
> infected. I urge all who do NOT have GOOD virus protection to get it
> ASAP.
> Onward to fun again!
