Pages Tagged “viruses”
Blog Posts
- Ahead of their time
Remember when the web was young, and email was just gaining popularity in the mainstream, and there was a slew of virus hoaxes like the Good Times Virus, or It Takes Guts to Say Jesus, or Elf Bowling? Remember painstakingly explaining to people that no, your computer couldn’t get a virus just by reading an […]
- Web worm in MySpace
Worms of the future: someone on MySpace *ptui!* came up with an actual JavaScript worm using cross-site scripting exploits and XMLHTTPRequest. In 24 hours, the worm had forced 1 million users to add him to their friends lists. Personally, MySpace bugs the heck out of me because it seems to have a culture that encourages […]
- Viruses: They’re not just annoyances anymore
If you’ve been paying attention to computer security, you already know that spam, viruses, and organized crime have been in bed together for at least a year. The recently-discovered theft of 40 million credit card numbers [edit: originally linked to Yahoo News] illustrates this point clearly: CardSystems was hit by a virus-like computer script that […]
- Sometimes viruses can’t read either
Over the last few days, one of the viruses going around (probably a Mytob variant) has been trying to send its “Your account is being suspended! Open this file now!” come-ons. It forges the return address as support@example.net, admin@example.net, etc. We block any incoming mail using these addresses before it even gets to our virus […]
- Outlook Viruses Trash Non-Outlook Mailboxes
Mozilla developer Ben Goodger writes about losing his inbox to the latest virus… despite not using any vulnerable software. Apparently he’s been getting over 10,000 virus-laced messages every day, and with the four-day weekend they built up to the point that Thunderbird wasn’t able to handle the influx. (Imagine having to filter out 770 megabytes […]
- Another bogus warning
Here’s another one. First the notice they sent me: Subject: VIRUS (Worm.SomeFool.P) IN MAIL FROM YOU VIRUS ALERT Our content checker found virus: Worm.SomeFool.P in your email to the following recipient: -> ADDRESS REMOVED Please check your system for viruses, or ask your system administrator to do so. Delivery of the email was stopped! And […]
- Out in the open
Just what we need. Netcraft reports a worm that installs a network sniffer. What’s that? It’s a program that listens in on traffic going across your network, looking for things like, oh, login names and passwords, credit card numbers, etc. They’re the reason online commerce requires SSL encryption. Sniffers work because of the way ethernet […]
- Go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
Now this is interesting: the Amus worm will verbally taunt the user using Windows XP’s speech-generating features. F-Secure has posted a .wav, and McAfee’s writeup has an MP3. Oddly, Symantec’s entry says nothing about the speech. Maybe they don’t have speakers on their test boxes.
- Check the wording!
Oh, this is good! You may have heard a few days ago that the latest MyDoom variant includes a request for work in the antivirus industry. Well, the comic strip User Friendly has come up with the perfect solution!
- Giving virus writers honest work
By way of Justin Mason and the SpamAssassin mailing list comes this post about writing add-ons for Outlook. Seth Goodman writes of Outlook’s contact list: This feature was apparently added for the convenience of virus writers, who it appears were one of the key groups that set the design requirements for this product Ronald F. […]
- Wolf Cry
More “You sent a virus!” garbage going around. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even look at most delivery failure notices, which means I could easily miss errors about mail I really did send. I got ticked off enough this time that I wrote back to the return address on the warning, matching […]
- Total Waste of Bandwidth
I regularly get bogus bounces from clueless virus scanners that don’t realize the sending address is fake 99% of the time, but this takes the cake: Sometime last night I received three copies of the same notice from some system in Brazil. They had written their virus warning in Microsoft Word, saved it as HTML […]
- It’s All True!
Here are several humor articles that have been posted to the SpamAssassin discussion list over the past week: The TechWeb Spin: All spam is true! (Fredric Paul, Internet Week, June 29, 2004): Yes, you read it here: it’s all true! The author explains about all the money he’s gotten from deposed Nigerian dictators, the software […]
- Interesting Combination
This morning I recieved both a bogus “Out of Office” reply from someone at Halliburton (presumably from a virus that spoofed my address as the sender) and a new 419 scam variant, this one claiming to be someone in Iraq. (I still think of them as Nigerian scams, but they’ve gone seriously international over the […]
- One Degree
Anyone whose email address is posted on a web site probably doesn’t bother to identify who sent them viruses anymore. With faked return addresses and the high probability that your only connection to the sender is the fact that they visited your web page sometime in the last month, there really isn’t much point. Every […]
- Viral degrees of separation
With the new crop of email viruses – the ones that fake the return address based on the same sources (address books, web caches, etc.) as the target list – you get a few interesting effects. The first is that there is a good chance you’ll recieve many copies of the virus from the same […]
- Harry Potter computer viruses
Inspired by finding a list of Babylon 5 viruses earlier this week. Harry Potter virus: Looks like the last file of a virus you just wiped out, until you try to erase it–then it wipes your drive. Voldemort virus: You can’t get rid of it, only make it dormant. It can be reactivated by the […]
- Sobig PITA
The world of email viruses has changed. In the old days, they would piggyback on the messages you sent, or make your regular mail program send them out while you weren’t looking. These days they send the messages themselves, so they pick a fake return address from the same source as its list of victims: […]
- Who’s REALLY responsible for spreading viruses? (UPDATED)
My dad forwarded me an opinion piece from the eWeek newsletter called Idiocy Imperils the Web. Jim Rapoza argues that – especially by now – people should really have figured out not to click on unknown attachments. My favorite quote: “Most people figure out that if they keep grabbing the electric fence, they’ll get a […]
- Random Rent
Someone’s virus-generated email message sent me an attachment: the complete lyrics to the stage musical RENT. Um, okay…