Protecting Yourself from Worms and Viruses: A Cautionary Tale

[Monique]

I am so surprised getting an email with a worm today, luckily I was smart enough not to open attachments from people I don't know (or from anyone for that matter).

The thing is that I don't even give that email address out to anyone but friends, it is a long name with compound words, and somehow this person got a hold of it, not nice :(


Last week a friend of mine was going to look at the file britney.jpg (when will they grow up) he clicked it, his computer started formatting the HD. He shuts down the computer, tries to restart it, after which the computer goes into an endless cycle of starting and shutting down. Somehow he formatted the HD, was able to start the computer and in a 3 min window had to get rid of the virus, which eventually he managed, but it meant a loss of 80 gigs of data (of which digital pics without backup).


Any similar stories?

 

[chroot]

Backup early and often. If all your important data is stored safely on CDs, for example, a total system wipe is not really a big deal.

Something you may want to look into are the so-called disposable email addresses.

Your friends probably did not willfully give out your email address. Far more likely is the scenario in which one of them is infected with a worm/virus that looks through their email program, harvesting addresses of potential victims.

- Warren

 

[Monique]

Yes, I keep backups on CDs.. I wonder why that guy didn't.. he has like hundreds of CDs lying in his house :P

And I didn't even know that person who sent the mail! Maybe I have more friends then I knew off..

Not a smart person though if they open een attachment ending with .scr A bit freaky, who would keep an email address of a person unknown?

And I have the ultimate protection (for my friends) against scenarios like this. Might actually be usefull for the other members to implement!'

In my hotmail account I have created a fake contact, with name 0000 and email address 0000. When such a worm tries to sent emails to my contact list, it will fail since the first address is non existant. All I will get is an email from Hotmail that the action failed and that I should check the addresses and try again (NOT).

At least, if they didn't change anything in the last few years to work around this little trick.

 

[chroot]

Originally posted by Monique
And I didn't even know that person who sent the mail! Maybe I have more friends then I knew off..

Smart money says you know the person. They don't realize they have the worm. The worm will send messages that do not appear to come from your friend -- it will use random addresses. Keep in mind that there's no inherent identity-checking in email. You can send a message appearing to be anyone else you want. The only way to tell, really, is by looking at the path the message took through the mail servers. You might want to try comparing the headers of the email with the headers of legitimate emails from your friends. You might find one or two people are most likely to have been the sender.

In my hotmail account I have created a fake contact, with name 0000 and email address 0000. When such a worm tries to sent emails to my contact list, it will fail since the first address is non existant. All I will get is an email from Hotmail that the action failed and that I should check the addresses and try again (NOT).

This sounds almost like a disposable address scheme.

- Warren

 

[dduardo]

This is one of the reasons I'm on a linux machine. Windows virus have no effect on my computer and I can open attachements at will.

Monique, you say he had 80Gigs of digital pics. Thats quite a collection. Assuming he is the type of person to open britney.jpg, i can deduce the type of material contained within the photographs.

That will teach him a lesson.

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by dduardo
This is one of the reasons I'm on a linux machine. Windows virus have no effect on my computer and I can open attachements at will.

Monique, you say he had 80Gigs of digital pics. Thats quite a collection. Assuming he is the type of person to open britney.jpg, i can deduce the type of material contained within the photographs.

That will teach him a lesson.

hahaha, very funny :P

No, he had 80 gigs of data and was planning to buy 30 gigs more since his computer was becoming full. Only a portion of that was digital pics (he says..)

Good thing: he saved money not having to buy the extra 30 gigs :P


Scroot, what you said is very interesting, I didn't know that. So a friend could've sent it, where a different senders address actually shows up? Thats strange..

Going to send a hate mail now to my friends, who was stupid enough to open an attachment called funny.scr

I saw that it will actually cause the computer to dial 911, nasty.

 

[megashawn]

Ya, used to be able (probably still can, I'm retired) login to a pop3 server via telnet and send an email. The trick, is that the server doesn't verify the sender address. So, one of my old favorite pranks was to email someone from an address like "Scam003@CIA.com" or something.

The virus works much the same way except it uses your friends computer to make the telnet connection, and fills in the sender address with a bogus addy. My guess is that the from address probably doesn't even exist. This is how worms spread, being hidden.

 

[Adrian Baker]

re different senders address...

I have a busy website and so receive 80 or 90 emails a day from all over the world - (half of which are Spam)

Anyway, on at least two recent occasions I received an email, with virus attached, supposedly from myself!

(And no, my PC is clean)

 

[Tweek]

Originally posted by Adrian Baker
re different senders address...

I have a busy website and so receive 80 or 90 emails a day from all over the world - (half of which are Spam)

Anyway, on at least two recent occasions I received an email, with virus attached, supposedly from myself!

(And no, my PC is clean)

HAha that's funny! Did you open it?

 

[Sourire]

Trojan and worms come across the intenet the only thing that will stop them is a firewall. Virus's are the only things that travel via email.

 

[chroot]

Originally posted by Sourire
Trojan and worms come across the intenet the only thing that will stop them is a firewall. Virus's are the only things that travel via email.

Well, that's pretty much entirely false. Sorry.

- Warren

 

[dduardo]

Originally posted by chroot
Well, that's pretty much entirely false. Sorry.

- Warren

Yeah, you get worms and viruses from not practicing safe internet usage.

Remember kids - if you use the Internet always use protection.