NEW VIRUS

[itrecovery]

Hi Gang,

Beware about new worm e-mail Virus. Delete ant suspisios e-mail with ZIP attachemnt.

ExampleS of e-mail body message:

"The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment."

"Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available."

[amberwoodottawa]

Already recd this one this evening. Virus attempt number 15 I think, not including the several thousand spams coming from eBays computers to my server today (they are supposedly looking onto this.

We just removed over 1,900 viruses from my daughters computer today (I think it is a record). One of the viruses infected every file, duplicating itself.

It was detected this moring as one of the viruse kept shutting down her computer, not allowing us to start it up to try to clean out the system.

Last time we only found about 30 on her system so this has to be some sort of record. It took my son almost 5 hours to find them all (some in hidden folders) and clean up the entire system.

We get at least 25 attempts to infect us per day (sent directly to us) with attachments.

Malcolm

[amberwoodottawa]

Already recd this one this evening. Virus attempt number 15 I think, not including the several thousand spams coming from eBays computers to my server today (they are supposedly looking onto this).

We just removed over 1,900 viruses from my daughters computer today (I think it is a record). One of the viruses infected every file, duplicating itself over and over.

It was detected this moring as one of the viruse kept shutting down her computer, not allowing us to start it up to try to clean out the system.

Last time we only found about 30 on her system so this has to be some sort of record. It took my son almost 5 hours to find them all (some in hidden folders) and clean up the entire system.

We get at least 25 attempts to infect us per day (sent directly to us) with attachments.

Malcolm

[amberwoodottawa]

Tuesday morning 9:31am and I have received 8 emails in the last 2 hours, all different from any rec'd before all with attachments with various viruses.

It seems to go in cylces. I will get 5 to 25 per day for 3 months, all basically the same (eg purportedly from PayPal) and then Whamo, a whole new group of them, each with totally different messages than any rec'd before.

These ones started 2 days ago and with 8 new ones this morning, I can probably expect a big flood of them shortly as people open them up and they get into their address books and then email themselves to everyone in their saved address book.

What a useless life people have by spending their time puposely creating, manipulating, enhancing and sending virues.

I guarantee if I ever come across someone who does it, they better have voice recognition software because they will never be able to type again.

Malcolm

[whoscloset]

I received this one today purportedly sent from myself!

Luckily my virus detector picks it up as soon as I open my e-mail program.

Monique

[amberwoodottawa]

Came back home 4pm, looked at computer, 10 more virus attached emails. One in French and 2 look like Arabic.

Typical "Hello, Open attachment" crap or "Your email attached sent to %^&%@*(*&.com could not be sent, please open attachmet" or "The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment" as originally reported by itrecovery.

I am willing to be I will get at least 40 today.

Malcolm

[ospreylinks]

I had been lucky, but today I started to receive the virus laden emails.... probably got 10 of them.

What is wrong with people.... too much time on their hands or what?

Jeff

[amberwoodottawa]

Its now 2 hours since I last reported and I have gotten another 10 so I am right on track to get at least 40 today.

Malcolm

[aabros]

got all kinds of emails like that. we just delete them, no big deal.

[amberwoodottawa]

It is funny though that they come in waves. We will get one or two and then all of a sudden for a week straight 30 or 40 per day and then it ends, a couple of weeks or so go by and whamo andother run of the same types of emails.

We also toss them out immediately and dont waste any time or effort on them however the issue of spammers attempting to get access to our server is another matter entirely.

Malcolm

[gloriaguides]

They say this one is spreading fast. I rarely give out my home email except to my buyers and I've gotten a about a dozen viruses sent just today. They say this one has a variety of forms. I hope they find the person(s) who started this one -- they need to deal very firmly (throw away the key?) with some of these people. Thousands of hours of people's time wasted dealing with these viruses. What some people do for kicks! Think what they could do instead that might be constructive!

[amberwoodottawa]

Even though we have anti virus scan on my daughter's computer (used by my 14 year old daughter and her mother (age not to be disclosed)) we had a virus that seriously infected her system last week.

It took my son over 5 hours to clean it out. It kept turning on and off her computer and infected every file so she actually had over 1,800 viruses to deal with. The main one ended up hiding iteself in a 'hidden file'.

Anyway things have been great for a week and today it started all over again with her computer turning on and off.

The idea behind that is to prevent someone from starting up the computer and being able to clean out the viruses.

Malcolm

[muminlaw]

Malcolm, I'm not too versed in the technical stuff (which is why my nephew got me using Mozilla 'stead of IE & OE) but would using a router prevent an outside user from starting up the computer? I know it doesn't have any protection against viruses, but it's supposed to be a hardware firewall. (or did I misundertand you?)

Glenda

[amberwoodottawa]

Glenda
Yes, in part. However since my daughter shares the network with our business computers she cant be given the same security or else something she or my wife "invites" into the system through a download or a floppy disk could infect and affect our business computers.

So while we are all connected, my son's computer and mine are further protected by allowing hers to be a little more exposed.

Her computer starts and stops on its own because it has a virus in it that is turning it on and off, not because someone outside of our network has access to it.

At the same time we have faced over a week of a spammer trying to use our server as one of his servers in a link of at least 10 to send spam out.

What upsets me is that the URLs (computer address) that identified which server was being used to attempt access to our server went right back to eBay and despite my emailing them to their spoof@ebay.com as well as my silver PS support SEVERAL days ago, we have not had any response from them.

I was one of the pioneers in computing back in the late 60s when I learned Fortran programming and I continued being extensively involved right thru with the early PCs and AS400s up to the time Windows 95 came into the picture when I elected to let my son take over in the high tech area of the family.

I now consider myself to be a dinosaur in technology and loving it.

Malcolm

[cutecoins]

WOW ! Really "We get at least 25 attempts to infect us per day (sent directly to us) with attachments.Malcolm"

In over 8 years on the computer and almost as long on ebay we have had three "viruses." Using some of the file sharing programs seems to be a problem with some of the kids I know but this is strange....We have had three internet providers and we have discovered that one provider has never taken spam seriously and we still get the garbage in spite of their anti-spam software. We changed our email address with the one provider and have switched to a cable internet provider....not one simgle spam has reached our computer since we changed the internet over to cable.

I was involved in Crime Stopper many years ago and think internet society has to buy into the idea and set up a similar program on line. Many of us may think it is too much like "BIG BROTHER" watching over use but the spammers and the sick-o s need to be stopped from taking peoples time efforts and energy.

Ooops I slipped off the soap box...who's turn is it now... next...

[moltencore]

Got tons of those emails - a pain to delete, but what's it like to have a virus? I'm on a Mac and have NEVER had one.
;-)
Gail (trying not to be too smug)

[zarzuella]

Me, too Gail. It's great!

Ann

[muminlaw]

In 9 years on the internet, I've only ever had one virus (actually a worm), and I didn't even know I had it until my son-in-law asked me about a message that was popping up on his email program every time he opened one of my emails - something to do with ActiveX control. I scanned, found the worm (along with it's name), got the instructions from symantec's site on how to eliminate it, followed them step-by-step, and that was it.

It took longer to find out from Symantec how the heck it got past my NAV in the first place, and what makes them think I should trust them to protect my computer now!! They explained how I should tweak my settings and I haven't had a problem since.

As far as I'm concerned, SPAM is much more annoying, but then I've never had a virus that actually crashed my system. Mailwasher helps with SPAM control -- it doesn't eliminate it, but at least you don't have to look at it!

Glenda

[amberwoodottawa]

Ive never had a virus on my system but my daughter has had a couple over the last 6 months and its a toss up us between whether she allowed it to infect her computer or my wife did, as my wife is delegated to use my daughter's computer only.

Not very pleasant at all having a serious virus. They wont allow you to run the programs to get rid of them.

By the way, dont get me going on about Macs, I served as a VP of several companies on contract and one of them was a Mac VAR (Value Added Reseller). I used the latest Macs for 4 years in that environment while also using PCs at home.

Macs have their place. Fortunately it is not at my place (although I keep a Mac and a Mac dedicated laser printer in case I have a contract with one of the 1% of the population that use them.

It would be easy to find out who was sending a virus to infect the Mac operating system, you just have to look at the other 200 or so people who own one.

Malcolm
(Purposely being smug for a little levity)

[www-labels4less-com]

It should be noted that many virii in the past have been able to disable Norton. Its a good idea once (or more) per month to run a free online virus scan such as


http://housecall.trendmicro.com/