Heads up on nasty email virus.
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Tomas
Banned
Does a week go by without another virus / worm / trojan aimed at users of MS software? Yeah, I didn't think so.
Looking at those things as they come in my e-mail gets me to thinking about weird e-mail programs that will automaticly run unvalidated software. *shudder*
An .EXE file isn't software as far as I'm concerned. It's just an organized collection of bits that serves no particular purpose under my preferred OS. Some may call it software, but unless it is capable of being executed on my machine, that's only wishful thinking on the programmer's part, isn't it?
Take care,
Sent from a = MICROSOFT FREE ZONE =
Looking at those things as they come in my e-mail gets me to thinking about weird e-mail programs that will automaticly run unvalidated software. *shudder*
An .EXE file isn't software as far as I'm concerned. It's just an organized collection of bits that serves no particular purpose under my preferred OS. Some may call it software, but unless it is capable of being executed on my machine, that's only wishful thinking on the programmer's part, isn't it?
Take care,
James S
Flashlight Enthusiast
I"m with you Tomas, no MS "software" here either
I get several various virii sent to me a week and none of them have done me any more damage than the time they take away from my life as I delete them from my server. And thats quite enough to make me angry.
This would be an MS free zone, but while cleaning out some boxes the other day I found diskettes (remember those?) with MS Word 4 on it! No use for it now though.
I get several various virii sent to me a week and none of them have done me any more damage than the time they take away from my life as I delete them from my server. And thats quite enough to make me angry.
This would be an MS free zone, but while cleaning out some boxes the other day I found diskettes (remember those?) with MS Word 4 on it! No use for it now though.
e=mc²
Enlightened
James, what OS do you use? I'm running Netscape on a Mac, do I need to worry? There are various flavors of Unix for my 68000 family processor, as I am seriously considering it. I won't miss the GUIness of my Mac OS. I have several MS based PCs, none of which are connected to the internet. I primarily use these for my coding projects. (I'm a Java head). Test, then deploy to the web via CDRs as I feel the necessity of keeping those "work" computers safely offline.
Ed.
Ed.
Chris M.
Flashlight Enthusiast
For those of you stuck with micro$haft, you can add a line of defence between your e-mail server and your Inbox, in the form of Mailwasher - http://mailwasher.net . It can be free but the creator asks that those who like it, donate something towards development costs.
Just set Mailwasher to ping your mailserver instead of your e-mail program, and look at the new messages that come in. You can preview in raw text form so nothing can get through it.
Recieve an e-mail with an attachment from someone you don`t know? Blank body of the message, nonsensical subject and ~120-130kb attachment? Delete it right off the server before it gets near you.
If you`re a bit of a nerd you can view the message source and see the headers and ASCII interpretation of the attachment too, and be able to determine what`s OK (ie, someone sent you a holiday photo, etc) or what`s evil (double file extension, EXE, PIF, SCR files, etc...).
The valid and friendly mail can then be safely downloaded into your mail program right after deleting the unwanted stuff, without much to worry about!
Oh - and Mailwasher is also useful for de-spamming your mail too, that is its main reason to exist, you can bouce back spam as if it was sent to an invalid/undeliverable mail box. Sooner or later all but the most aggressive spammers will leave you alone cos they think your address is no longer valid. The worst thing you cna do with spam is open it, read it, and send Remove requests to the addresses contained within.
But that`s for another day and another topic...
Just set Mailwasher to ping your mailserver instead of your e-mail program, and look at the new messages that come in. You can preview in raw text form so nothing can get through it.
Recieve an e-mail with an attachment from someone you don`t know? Blank body of the message, nonsensical subject and ~120-130kb attachment? Delete it right off the server before it gets near you.
If you`re a bit of a nerd you can view the message source and see the headers and ASCII interpretation of the attachment too, and be able to determine what`s OK (ie, someone sent you a holiday photo, etc) or what`s evil (double file extension, EXE, PIF, SCR files, etc...).
The valid and friendly mail can then be safely downloaded into your mail program right after deleting the unwanted stuff, without much to worry about!
Oh - and Mailwasher is also useful for de-spamming your mail too, that is its main reason to exist, you can bouce back spam as if it was sent to an invalid/undeliverable mail box. Sooner or later all but the most aggressive spammers will leave you alone cos they think your address is no longer valid. The worst thing you cna do with spam is open it, read it, and send Remove requests to the addresses contained within.
But that`s for another day and another topic...
James S
Flashlight Enthusiast
e=mc2, You're safe, at least from this one on your Mac. (mine's a mac too, but around the house I've got several linux and various mac machines running everything from QNIX to bsd on 68k macs that run great as firewall and database servers, my decision to use a Mac as opposed to windows is well informed as I've been a programmer for a long time and have programmed for and on just about every version of windows
There still are viruses for the Mac, so you can't abandon internet hygiene altogether. There is even a Mac analog for the visual basic that most of these viruses are written in AppleScript. So far I am aware of only one written this way though. The most important difference is that there are no hooks into the Mac email clients that could force the thing to run just by opening or viewing the email. You would have to be tricked into double clicking it. So the same rules definitely apply, don't just double click things people send you! But you are safe receiving, downloading viewing and deleting any of the PC or future Mac viruses that you might get in an email.
There still are viruses for the Mac, so you can't abandon internet hygiene altogether. There is even a Mac analog for the visual basic that most of these viruses are written in AppleScript. So far I am aware of only one written this way though. The most important difference is that there are no hooks into the Mac email clients that could force the thing to run just by opening or viewing the email. You would have to be tricked into double clicking it. So the same rules definitely apply, don't just double click things people send you! But you are safe receiving, downloading viewing and deleting any of the PC or future Mac viruses that you might get in an email.
