Another nasty email virus?

http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5147605.html?tag=nefd_lede

http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=100983#indications

Just a heads-up.

Yep... I've been getting this one for a couple days now. Haven't opened it, of course... just hit the delete button... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif

Glad I am not vulnerable to that one, since I use linux for my email (for just this reason). Not starting a flame war or trying to.

i have my email st up so only people in my contacts list can email me the rest goes to garbage.i then look thru garbage to see if there is email that i wanted to get in there and add them to my contacts.helps a lot with spam and i never open atatchments

I got one of these this morning, with "Error" in the subject line, and "This message contains unicode characters..." in the body, with a zipped attachment attached. I saved the attachment in my downloads subdirectory, and then checked it with AVG or whatever that is. It said it was a virus, so I shitcanned it, and deleted the offending email too. I always check attachments I get from unexpected sources; AVG caught this one before I tried to open it.

The mail server at work has caught over 1200 of them in the last two days... "Mydoom" has hit the top of the charts... this one is worse than any other bug that has been out there.

Even with 1200+ hits, we only had two infections- we managed to isolate and clean them quickly.

I am seeing a minimum of 8 MyDoom emails per day and 3 of the Hello. These are in my primary email account only. No other account I have, is getting them (so far).

Between Mozilla Messenger and Linux (Mandrake 9.1) I am virus, worm, and trojan free. How long this will last, i cannot say (depends on if someone can come up with a doozy for linux systems). Then again, I am suspicious of these things to begin with. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Craig, you can have AVG check attachments, so you need not save them to scan them. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Well, Mr Bradshaw, unless you run your Linux box as "root" you would have little to fear from a worm even IF it was written to work in Linux. Mozilla mail has the "do not allow scripts in Email" set as a default, so a user would have to set that option *on* first...
Theoretically, it IS possible to write a Linux virus, but the users would have to run it with administrative privs to allow it to do any real damage to a system.... even then, watchdog programs like "Tripwire" would notify the system administrator of any changes to critical system files immediately.

I like Windows- it keeps me employed and very busy... if it weren't for all the bugs, patches, problems, and Virus chasing, I'd probably have been downsized years ago.

BTW- out "Caught virus count" at work (for "MyDoom" ONLY) is now up to 1,375

[ QUOTE ]
Charles Bradshaw said:
Craig, you can have AVG check attachments, so you need not save them to scan them. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

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I'll have to look into this...currently, attachments must be manually saved into a subdirectory (right click, then save as), and then manually scanned (the popup window you get when you open a zip file has "unzip" and "run AVG" as some of its options).

I use Netscape Communicator as my email handler; this seems to work fine as long as the inbox file does not exceed 240 megabytes or so in size. Much larger than that, and Communicator crashes until you move or get rid of the files (inbox and inbox.snm) and start new ones (I copied my draft and draft.snm files and then renamed them; as I do not use the draft files).

I don't know how Eudora or other email programs handle attachments, as I do not use them.

As far as email viruses, I just shitcan any emails with attachments from anyone I do not know, and that seems to do the job.

I am on OS X...no viruses here...muhahhahahhahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[ QUOTE ]
The LED Museum said:
As far as email viruses, I just shitcan any emails with attachments from anyone I do not know, and that seems to do the job.

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The problem with this new generation of Email viruses is that they "spoof" the email header- they very well *could* look like they are from someone you know.

and then, proving that history teaches us nothing, I continue to get bounce messages from overly helpful email servers at corporations all over the world telling me that an email I never sent was not delivered to someone I don't know because it contained a virus. Oh, and here is a copy of the original message with the virus included. Thank you very much.

I'd like to remind those developers of said email programs at said companies and the people that use them that there has never been in the history of email viruses one that used a real return address. And somehow I find it unlikely that one will ever be created that does. So bouncing a message back to the person in the from field just compounds the problem even further. Hello? Anybody there?

I've been deleting about a dozen of those an hour out of my inbox for the last 2 days. Makes coming in in the morning a lot of fun to see how many are there today.

THere was one going around last week that was different. It claimed to have logged my IP address and that I was about to be hauled into jail for file sharing /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif And then it included a file that supposedly contained the list of files I was going to jail for, except it was a trojan /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif What FUN! Now, if only they were smart enough to only send them to people with computers they can actually run on, that would save me some time...

The bounce messages are going to have to stop. You've not only got the mail servers bouncing, you've got antispam software doing it too. Bounce messages are now competing against spam in uselessly consuming resources and bringing servers down. Bounces have lived out their usefullness. We're going to have to consider them in the same way we consider open relay servers.

[ QUOTE ]
charliek said:
The problem with this new generation of Email viruses is that they "spoof" the email header- they very well *could* look like they are from someone you know.


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I already know this, and virus-check even familiar sender's attachments before I try to open them. So far, so good. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
I haven't caught an email virus yet, so I think I'm relatively safe that way with my virus prevention efforts.

My mailer checks four different email accounts every 5 minutes... y'all can imagine what my inbox looks like... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

[ QUOTE ]
Empath said:
The bounce messages are going to have to stop. You've not only got the mail servers bouncing, you've got antispam software doing it too. Bounce messages are now competing against spam in uselessly consuming resources and bringing servers down. Bounces have lived out their usefullness. We're going to have to consider them in the same way we consider open relay servers.


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Think of it this way Empath- Sending the bounce is just like being an open relay server. The virus spoofs the "from address" and sends it to a random email server- that server, even if it is *closed* to relaying, will send a "bounce" back to the "from"- thus relaying the message! It's sort of like mailing a letter with no postage and switching the to and from address on the envelope (we all know this is illegal and immoral). This helps to obscure the *real* source of the email. Very tough to track.

No, I don't run as Root. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Craig, AVG has the plugin for OE, but I am not sure about Netscape.

Actually there was a history of email viruses that used a real return address. There are TONS (>1000) of non-header-spoofing email viruses/worms (one big example would be the "I love you" virus if I'm not mistaken).
What's true is that the antivurus knows precisely the virus and also should know if it's a "spoofer" or not.

[ QUOTE ]
James S said:

I'd like to remind those developers of said email programs at said companies and the people that use them that there has never been in the history of email viruses one that used a real return address. And somehow I find it unlikely that one will ever be created that does.

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