From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Mon Aug 12 20:47:46 2002
Subject:Re: OT: Virus

All,

Viruses have been getting worse. For the record, no CWSG email has any attachments of any kind -- they are stripped off before mass-mailing, because that's the way I have the group set up. This procedure is specifically to try to prevent viruses like Klez.W32, which come as attachments to emails.

What clouds the issue is a new virus "feature" called 'email spoofing.' What happens is that the virus picks a random address from all of the web pages cached on the infected machine, and uses that address as the "from" address. This makes it nearly impossible to trace the email back to the source. All you need to do to spread a virus under my name is to have visited a site with my address, even once. Then, well-meaning recipients and automatic software on mail servers send back messages saying, "I think you have a virus on your machine" -- except that it's not coming from YOUR machine. I get about one of these a week, even though I: a) have Norton AV running in the background at all times; b) check for new virus updates from Norton every five minutes; c) run a full check of every file on my HDD once a week; and d) almost never recognize the address that I'm supposedly sending to. :^(

As a perfect example, many of the phony email alerts I get go to webmaster@ashbysolutions.com, an address that I have setup for receive-only; even when I reply to messages sent to that address, I use bruce@ashbysolutions.com.

>Cool. Not trying to point the finger. We had one floating around the Hammond
>Zone some months ago and quick communication stopped it before any real
>damage. Not trying to be Chicken Little, but it don't hurt to look up every
>once in a while. OHF Bob

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™ http://consult.ashbysolutions.com
CloneWheel Support Group and HiNote moderator
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com