[BC] is some new virus out there?

[Bill Brister]

The big push last week was the W32.sober.X at mm virus which was being
transported in attachments. E-mail claiming to be from the FBI, CIA and the
bounce messages flooded the country by the millions. They would say things
like we have logged your IP address at 30 illegal websites and we want you
to open this attachment and answer our questions. That's when the virus
would propagate. Everyone I correspond with by e-mail got multiple copies of
these e-mails. This deluge also prompted the real FBI to issue a statement
saying they didn't send e-mails like this to anyone and to ignore them and
don't open the attachments. This incident was labeled the worst effort this
year to fool people into opening viral attachments and was written up in USA
Today. That would have been last week or so if you want to try and find it.

The old axiom of not opening attachments is still true. That is the way the
vast majority of viruses are propagated. In addition to keeping your virus
definitions up to date you should never open attachments from unknown
sources. If you get one from a trusted source that you want to open you can
always have your antivirus program scan it individually.

Bill Brister
Houston, TX


-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Donna Halper
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 11:46 AM
To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List
Subject: [BC] is some new virus out there?

This morning, when I began to download my mail, I noticed about 35 bounce 
messages, all from the postmaster at AOL, and all to people I had never 
sent an e-mail to.  I up-date my own virus protection software daily, so I 
am sure this one is not anything I sent out, but I am curious about what 
virus might be out there right now that is making such a strong 
re-appearance  MYTOB perhaps?  -- It has been mainly yesterday and today 
that I noticed all the weird e-mails.  Has anyone else noticed a sudden 
influx of "Returned Mail-- Service Unavailable" messages to addresses they 
didn't recognise?

Also, please straighten something out for me, in language that a non-techie 
like me can comprehend, please!  Is it still true that if you don't open 
any attachments, you are usually safe, since that is still how most viruses 
are transmitted?  I've been hearing that this old truism is no longer so 
true, and I figured that if anybody would know, it's the experts on this 
list!  (Keep in mind, I am mainly a user and don't know a lot about the 
tech end of things, so I rely on the kindness of my friends to enlighten me 
and keep me from being misinformed!)   


_______________________________________________
This is the BROADCAST mailing list
To send to the list, email: broadcast at radiolists.net
For sub changes, archives and info on this other lists:
http://www.radiolists.net/