Computer Virus

[David Hickman]

Has anyone else had problems over the last few days with their e mail system. It looks like the problem occurs with web sites e mail. I have had numerous virus infected e mails from marine businesses.
I think it is all auto generated mail but surely this means that all these marine companies/boat sales do not have anti-virus up to date?
Any e mail boffins out there who can explain it? or any of you with your own web sites been having the same problems>

[John Kennett]

It's the Novbarg/MyDoom virus, and it seems to be hitting hard. I've received over 300 copies of it so far

More details are available from Symantec amongst other people. A quick Google search will give you even more . . .

It is important that everyone installs a virus checker, and keeps it up to date. There are loads out there, my currect choice is eTrust AntiVirus although there may well be better and cheaper options.

Even more important is that people learn NOT TO OPEN EMAIL ATTACHMENTS unless they are confident that they are safe. I have now activated email filters that automatically delete any email with an attachment that is an executable (program) file or a zip file. It might be worth checking whether your ISP can offer these facilities.

John

[Bill S]

The current crop of email viruses (mi-mail & doom variants) have the ability to 'spoof' the senders address. In other words, they copy whole or parts of addresses from infected PC's contact lists, to make it seem that the email comes from a bona-fida address.

It looks like someone has you and a whole host of other marine contacts set up on his PC, and has not updated his virus checker quickly enough. He has an infected PC. The virus is sending mail (with spoofed sender details) to everyone on his contact list. It makes it look to you that you have been mailed by a lot of marine related people. It's probably just the one PC somewhere doing it over & over. It will stop when the infected PC's owner updates his virus checker, detects the virus, then kills it.

Of course, by then, there is every likelihood of one of the recipients being infected, and so the cycle starts again.

The best you can do is to keep your own virus checker up to date so that it detects the virus and will not allow it to infect your PC.

You might like to phone a purported sender (someone you know?)to check whether they actually did send you the mail.

Not a lot of help I know, buts thats the nature of the beast!

Bill S

[Matt]

Sorry, Edited....

[simmons0]

Yes ive had a few copies of this all seeming to come from one of my friends who's address is saved in our address book.
When you read the email it is so obvious that it was not written by a human though.

Be aware of .exe, .zip, and .dll files.
I had my computer key logged about 6 months ago and have since installed Zone Alarm Pro firewall and AVG anti-virus.
The firewall is a must!

[Alex Brown]

It's a nightmare virus - when it first came out, our smtp gateway at work was letting the whole lot through

Thankfully, all the clients were uptodate with definitions so were picking it up, but we've been getting around 300 a day into quarantine. Symantec were great with their support, and sent out a fix for the software within 30mins of me asking them (this problem was related to only some builds of their smtp gateway software - typically we had that).
What everyone should be aware of though, is that the W32.Novarg.A@mm virus does still sometimes get through a/v filtering thanks to the way some of the zip files are built.
The virus is quite clever though - I wonder how many random names it has written into it, we get every name under the sun @milford-docks.co.uk, @mhpa.co.uk etc... - some work, 98% don't!!

So far though, I haven't had one to home, which is amazing - lucky really cos the parents don't even have an a/v client

-Alex

[Austen]

Your right about having "up to date" anti-virus applications, perhaps more importantly, having up to date signature files.

The easiest way to combat 99.9% of viruses, is not to use any Microsoft products to read your email, most, if not all viruses, are designed to exploit weakness in applications like Outlook and Outlook Express. If you use another application, you may well get the virus, and yes, it may infect your computer, but one things for sure, you wont upset all your mates by sending them the virus as it trolls through your address book!

I would recommend something like Eudora. I know that most of you haven't heard of it, but it was around way before MicroSoft even thought about Internet Explorer.

You can down load it free from

http://www.eudora.com/email/index.html

austen...