Savin Your Buts once again :-P

dragon300zx · February 2, 2006

Before reading this little document I put together. GO BACKUP YOUR FREAKIN DATA ALREADY.

New Virus Alert.<o:p></o:p>

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<st1:place w:st="on">Kama</st1:place> Sutra, My Wife, Blackworm, Nyxem.E, CME-24, ETC.<o:p></o:p>

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“Some antivirus software can eliminate the virus. Users should make sure their antivirus and antispyware software is up to date and to scan their computers for malicious programs that may have been surreptitiously installed on their machines.
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However, not all antivirus programs are effective. Problems running antivirus software may be one sign your computer has been infected. Joe Stewart of LURHQ says like many recent worms, <st1:place w:st="on">Kama</st1:place> Sutra attempts to disable antivirus software when it is attacking a machine. “

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This nasty little virus, will spread itself through email, it will activate and launch it’s kill attacks beginning Friday February 3<sup>rd</sup>, and on the 3<sup>rd</sup> of every month thereafter. Although it self duplicates, and attempts to neutralize your antivirus software, it’s kill attack is much worse.

“Experts say Windows Office documents, Word documents, Excel spread sheets, and PDFs (portable document format) are among the files that will be "overwritten." That means the data will be changed and corrupted, and the original information will no longer be accessible. Zip files will also be included in this damage.”

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There is no patch from Microsoft that can stop this worm.<o:p></o:p>
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It is spread through email as attachments, and they are typically emails revolving around <st1:place w:st="on">kama</st1:place> sutra, porn, sex, etc. <o:p></o:p>
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Do not open emails that you do not know who they are from or what their contents are. Do not open any attachments that you are not sure are safe. This little worm even includes it’s own picture file that shows up in emails claiming that norton’s antivirus has determined the file is not infected. <o:p></o:p>
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The worm, which also goes by the names Blackworm, Blackmal, and Nyxem, has been spreading since January 16. It is capable of infecting Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98 and Windows ME operating systems.
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"This is a really damaging worm. This is not one of those worms that is interested in having access to your machine for purposes later on. This worm will really damage your machine," Georgia Tech's Furst said.

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"Unfortunately, there is no way to patch user ignorance, and the way this virus propagates is through user ignorance," he said. (quote from John Stewart of LURHQ Computer Information Security Firm)

Sergile also says home users need to be aggressive about questioning e-mail messages and attachments, even if it appears they are coming from colleagues, friends, or relatives. Many e-mail viruses spread by forwarding themselves to everyone in a user's e-mail address book.

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"So while you might think it is coming from cousin Alice, most likely cousin Alice is not going to send you something that says 'Hey look at these pictures with naked people.' So that should be your first clue that a virus is propagating and you'd be well served to call cousin Alice to let her know that she is [unknowingly] sending out this type of e-mail," Sergile said.

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This is all in all a nasty little bugger that can easily be prevented as long as you use precaution and don’t download emails you shouldn’t be.
As always you should make sure your antivirus software is up to date. This virus has spread mainly to home user’s so you have to check your computers at home or risk loosing all of your data. Even if your antivirus software is up to date thought it may not catch this worm. However there is a free download utility that will. Simply go to:

http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/nyxem_e.shtml
and download the F-Force Utility and is LATEST.ZIP definitions file.
http://www.f-secure.com/tools/f-force.zip
[FONT=&quot]http://download.f-secure.com/latest/latest.zip<o:p></o:p>[/FONT]
Unzip the F-Force utility into it’s own folder and copy and paste the LATEST.ZIP file into that folder without un-zipping it. Run the f-force.exe file and follow the prompts.<o:p></o:p>

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ALTHOUGH THIS VIRUS IS SET TO RUN ON THE THIRD OF EVERY MONTH IF YOUR COMPUTER’S CLOCK/CALENDAR IS NOT SET PROPERLY OR OFF BY A DAY OR TWO OR MORE THEN THE WORM WILL RUN ON THE DAY IT THINK’S IS THE THIRD.

Bob Bell · February 2, 2006

dragon300zx wrote:

Before reading this little document I put together. GO BACKUP YOUR FREAKIN DATA ALREADY.

Interesting. I use Thunderbird with AVG integrated to do mail scanning. I am going to have to check into this more. Thx for the heads up.

dragon300zx · February 2, 2006

Blech, AVG sucks. Did a test on a system here at work and AVG let 5 viruses go that were completely locking up the machine, and trend micro pc cillin blasted them away. Truth however is that no anti virus program is complete and fool proof. Best thing is to have two or three of them.

Andy · February 2, 2006

I'll sleep well tonight

rallymaniac · February 2, 2006

if you open emails from people that you don't know and especially those that have attachement and anything that has word sex, cama sutra, p3nis, and etc. you're just plain stupid and are asking for trouble

dragon300zx · February 2, 2006

"Unfortunately, there is no way to patch user ignorance, and the way this virus propagates is through user ignorance," he said. (quote from John Stewart of LURHQ Computer Information Security Firm)

DavidTO · February 2, 2006

rallymaniac wrote:

if you open emails from people that you don't know and especially those that have attachement and anything that has word sex, cama sutra, p3nis, and etc. you're just plain stupid and are asking for trouble

That's true, but stuff happens, we all make mistakes. Working on a PC is like living in a minefield, IMO. I'm just grateful that there's no viruses for my Mac...not that there won't ever be, but 0 is still a lot better than the 60,000 PC viruses. I'm with Andy. I'm gonna sleep fine tonight...

Bob Bell · February 2, 2006

rallymaniac wrote:

if you open emails from people that you don't know and especially those that have attachement and anything that has word sex, cama sutra, p3nis, and etc. you're just plain stupid and are asking for trouble

Some day a virus creator is going to use works like Canon, Nikon, Prime, Zoom, L Lens, VR vs IS. Then what are you going to call us

dragon300zx · February 2, 2006

Bob Bell wrote:

Some day a virus creator is going to use works like Canon, Nikon, Prime, Zoom, L Lens, VR vs IS. Then what are you going to call us

Easy Marks

ginger_55 · February 2, 2006

I am worried, have been, because I had problems with my mouse over the weekend. I finally banged it on the table and slammed out of the room. The mouse died.

Bill brought the mouse back to life, probably by turning off the PC and rebooting.

No one in this house watches porn that I know of, or opens it, but geez......something could have done something. Problems with mice freezing up are just the thing the article that I said to look for.

OK, I figured if I was screwed, I was screwed twice, so to speak.

But all my photos are on external hard drives. How does the virus affect the externals and when, does anyone know???

I have two attached to my PC right now, if I were to take the hard drives off of it before I went to bed tonight, would that make any difference???

That had not occurred to me before as an option.........now I wonder.

We do not have anything else on here that would kill me to lose. I can't/won't back up about 300 gbs of files this afternoon. If my stuff were to go, I would have to live with what is on smugmug.

But that was a thought on the fact it is all on the external hard drives.

ginger

And I am even afraid to download that thing you say to use to check for this thing. I download so little............but especially right now.

have any of you used whatever it is? Dragon? Would I have to do this every month...................simmer

I suppose I am hoping that the aol stuff has scanned the mail, it sure has slowed it up, but bill uses all sorts of other places.

dragon300zx · February 2, 2006

Follow the instructions in the email. There are two links to software to download. If you follow the instructions you can download the software and search and destroy the virus if it exists. The virus will kill things on external and network drives (however it is buggy with network drives) but it wont go after picture files as of yet.

rallymaniac · February 2, 2006

ginger_55 wrote:

I am worried, have been, because I had problems with my mouse over the weekend. I finally banged it on the table and slammed out of the room. The mouse died.

Bill brought the mouse back to life, probably by turning off the PC and rebooting.

No one in this house watches porn that I know of, or opens it, but geez......something could have done something. Problems with mice freezing up are just the thing the article that I said to look for.

OK, I figured if I was screwed, I was screwed twice, so to speak.

But all my photos are on external hard drives. How does the virus affect the externals and when, does anyone know???

I have two attached to my PC right now, if I were to take the hard drives off of it before I went to bed tonight, would that make any difference???

That had not occurred to me before as an option.........now I wonder.

We do not have anything else on here that would kill me to lose. I can't/won't back up about 300 gbs of files this afternoon. If my stuff were to go, I would have to live with what is on smugmug.

But that was a thought on the fact it is all on the external hard drives.

ginger

And I am even afraid to download that thing you say to use to check for this thing. I download so little............but especially right now.

have any of you used whatever it is? Dragon? Would I have to do this every month...................simmer

I suppose I am hoping that the aol stuff has scanned the mail, it sure has slowed it up, but bill uses all sorts of other places.

if you're using regular roller ball mouse, it may be just dirty. There are like 3 small controll wheels that the ball moves and they can get pretty dirty and if they are than the mouse will have problems to move around on the screen. Just remove the ball cover and the ball and clean them. I have my ball mouse since i bought my PC 4.5 years ago and it never failed me.
As for the external hard drives, if you have them connected to PC via USB or simmilar at all times, they're not really externall since they show up as Hard drives in you "my computer". External reffers only to the fact that they're not "in computer tower". If you have them disconnected, than you're safe.
As for emails, just don't open stuff that's spam and things that have attachement and you don't expect anything from that sender.
It's also useful to have some sort of firewall other than your XP standard one. Antivirus would help too.
I can recommend you Zone Alarm firewall and antyvirus package that comes free for about a month so you can try it and if you like it, it's only $30 a year. Not a big money for the ammount of protection it offers.
I have that package and have never had a problem with any virus and i spend about 6 hours online every day, downloading bunch of stuff. But i only download what i know it's pretty much safe. And don't open stupid spam emails, no matter what it says in the subject.
Oh and for the spyware you can use Spybot, or AdAware, that are free online. They install on your PC and scan for problems. There is nothing wrong with downloading them and using on your machine.
Also if you use Internet Explorer, you may want to stop doing that and switch to Firefox for example. It's almost identical but gives you freedom of surfing without popups and tons of garbage that goes throught IE.

Bob Bell · February 2, 2006

I am home now. I have scanned my PC's with F-Force, AVG, and Symantec and I will be sleeping comfortably this evening. It was worth the hour of scanning so I can be cool like the Macintosh Apple People

gus · February 2, 2006

rallymaniac wrote:

if you open emails from people that you don't know and especially those that have attachement and anything that has word sex, cama sutra, p3nis, and etc. you're just plain stupid and are asking for trouble

:uhoh

rallymaniac · February 3, 2006

Humungus wrote:

:uhoh

oh c'mon

the worm spreads through attachements that have p0rn names. Do you reall open stuff like that, because i don't so i don't have to worry about anything.
Besides all it could do is wipe out my word files from back when i was in college.
NO big deal really.

DavidTO · February 3, 2006

rallymaniac wrote:

oh c'mon
the worm spreads through attachements that have p0rn names. Do you reall open stuff like that, because i don't so i don't have to worry about anything.
Besides all it could do is wipe out my word files from back when i was in college.
NO big deal really.

You're living in a fool's paradise if you think that just not opening pr0n emails protects you. Some fool like Gus opens one, and the virus could easily spread from him to you via email.

dragon300zx · February 3, 2006

DavidTO wrote:

You're living in a fool's paradise if you think that just not opening pr0n emails protects you. Some fool like Gus opens one, and the virus could easily spread from him to you via email.

Besides just because the virus is known to be spread through emails with porn titles, doesn't mean it is only spread through emails with porn titles.

rallymaniac · February 3, 2006

DavidTO wrote:

You're living in a fool's paradise if you think that just not opening pr0n emails protects you. Some fool like Gus opens one, and the virus could easily spread from him to you via email.

the email form Gus will still have p0rn attachement

email body itself does not contain a virus

dragon300zx · February 3, 2006

rallymaniac wrote:

the email form Gus will still have p0rn attachement
email body itself does not contain a virus

No offense but...

Your theory is kinda like my friends theory that one form of birth control is enough.

Now their having a kid and he's shipping off to boot camp.

Better to over protect than to say "oh well I didn't open anything......".

Andy · February 3, 2006

David, I'm fine and dandy today - you?

gus · February 3, 2006

You people are so so cruel....all i wanted was a bigger venus & to fix my dyslexia !!! :cry :cry :cry

DavidTO · February 3, 2006

Andy wrote:

David, I'm fine and dandy today - you?

Not a worry...

rallymaniac · February 3, 2006

dragon300zx wrote:

No offense but...

Your theory is kinda like my friends theory that one form of birth control is enough.

Now their having a kid and he's shipping off to boot camp.

Better to over protect than to say "oh well I didn't open anything......".

no offence taken...
but i'm doing absolutely nothing about this new worm and just continue to do what i did for the past 4.5 years.
If you're worried about this one that only deletes some MS office files, than you shold be more worried about hundreds of different worms and viruses that spread through email and fake attachements every day and are much more dangerous than this one.

dragon300zx · February 3, 2006

rallymaniac wrote:

no offence taken...
but i'm doing absolutely nothing about this new worm and just continue to do what i did for the past 4.5 years.
If you're worried about this one that only deletes some MS office files, than you shold be more worried about hundreds of different worms and viruses that spread through email and fake attachements every day and are much more dangerous than this one.

Well actually why do you think I post these. I'm an IT director it is my job to worry about this on a daily basis.

rallymaniac · February 3, 2006

dragon300zx wrote:

Well actually why do you think I post these. I'm an IT director it is my job to worry about this on a daily basis.

i c

:

macaddict · February 5, 2006

Here's a good news report: Mac users may be feeling smug.

Sorry, the word play in this linked story gives me a "smugmug!"

I'm with Andy and Dave on this - zzzzzzz!

ginger_55 · February 5, 2006

I appear to be fine, too, for the moment.

And I put on everything, except the personal firewall thing, that AOL has to offer.

I actually hate protective stuff and really do wish I had a Mac, but I don't.

Now, with one of these protections, I can't look at my granddaughter's picture where she is featured in her school paper because something says I cannot open Java since it is not a known program. (And there is not the yellow line that my other protection used to give me so I could over ride that stuff, and it is not telling me which one it is, spyware, virus, or whatever. Just ranting.)

And I also hate messing with this stuff, so I am just living with the cocoon that protects me. Others have told me that the photo of my granddaughter is real cute. My daughter told me that their school system is safe. I believe that, but my protection doesn't.

(only used one form of birth control, it always worked............did it right)

ginger (protect me from those who seek to protect me: in general!)

Savin Your Buts once again :-P

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