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Do I have a virus?

Discussion in 'Whatnots' started by Sir Belisarius, Aug 29, 2003.

  1. Sir Belisarius

    Sir Belisarius Viconia's Boy Toy Distinguished Member ★ SPS Account Holder

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    Remove all ads!
    [​IMG] Each morning when I open my e-mail account I get 5 or 6 "Mail Delivery Failure" messages. When I look at the notice, it says that I am mailing out messages with strange sounding documents to addresses that are unfamiliar to me. This has been happening for the past 4 days now.

    What's going on? Is my computer sending out bogus e-mails while I sleep? Do I have a virus? Am I losing my mind? I haven't opened any of the accompanying files, but it seems weird that the messages would say they're being mailed from my address. Heeeeeelp!
     
    Sir Belisarius, Aug 29, 2003
    #1

  2. Pac man Gems: 25/31
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    Run a virus check, and you'll find out soon enough. Do you have the latest version of Norton ?
     
    Pac man, Aug 29, 2003
    #2
  3. Sir Belisarius

    Sir Belisarius Viconia's Boy Toy Distinguished Member ★ SPS Account Holder

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    [​IMG] Yes...And the addresses this thing is claiming to send e-mails to aren't even in my address book. But I'll run it again when I get home. I access my mail from my ISP's webmail system during the day.
     
    Sir Belisarius, Aug 29, 2003
    #3
  4. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    It is also possible that someone presents your address as the return address for crap he sends to people. Or even that he's using your mailbox for that purpose. At least, it's better that you receive mail delivery failure than mail delivery success.
     
    chevalier, Aug 29, 2003
    #4
  5. Arabwel

    Arabwel Screaming towards Apotheosis Veteran

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    I keep hgetting those, too... I haven't opened any of them becaause I figured that the subject line is nothing more than a creative way of getting me open the messages.
     
    Arabwel, Aug 29, 2003
    #5
  6. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Re's are just message subjects. Everyone can frame the subject as he will. Any attachment to such a 're' is a 99,(99)% potential virus. In other cases it's junk ad material.

    This pissess me off to abysmal fury level. To claim re to something I've never written! This is more than just stupidity and lie... this is... oh well, so awful that I can't find a word for it. Should be a criminal charge!
     
    chevalier, Aug 29, 2003
    #6

  7. Silverwolf86 Gems: 6/31
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    Actually Aol and Yahoo joined up to file a whole bunch of lawsuits against chronic spammers and virus creators/senders. They're doing just about everything they can think of to make it illegal. I guess AOL hates spammers and viruses just as much as we do. :D As for checking to see if you have a virus, run a virus scan (I use Macafee) and it should be able to tell you (and if you have Macafee's firewall it can usually fix it too) otherwise my best policy is just to ignore those emails and especially ones with attachments from people you don't know.
     
    Silverwolf86, Aug 29, 2003
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  8. Mithrantir Gems: 15/31
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    Run Ad-aware 6 the latest if possible. In case there is a dubious *.exe file or a spy programm and then run Norton with the latest definitions. Chances are that you may have a virus so try and a dos scan in case the norton is corrupted. Beware scanning your pc through dos with an antivirus requires that at least your boot drive or partition must not have the NTFS file system since it is not possible for DOS to recognize it.
     
    Mithrantir, Aug 29, 2003
    #8
  9. Morgoth

    Morgoth La lune ne garde aucune rancune Veteran

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    It might also be a trojan sending your passwords, better run adaware AND a good virusscanner
     
    Morgoth, Aug 29, 2003
    #9
  10. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    This latest strain of the SoBig virus picks up a lot of e-mail addresses from various sources and forges the mail headers of the infected mails it sends out, inserting at random the e-mails it gathered in it, making it appear like you sent it. (Even though you didn't.)

    Naturally, many of the mails are also sent to dead/unused/full addresses, and in that case a notification of undelivered mail is automatically sent back to the sender - only in this case, you are specified as the sender in the forged header, so the infected mail bounces back to you. This can happen if you actually are infected, or if you are not. I got 780 such bounced mail reports along with a number of infected mails this morning... This virus really is a nuisance. And considering I'm still getting so many infected mails every day, there must still be dozens of idiots out there who are spreading infected mails unawares.
     
    Taluntain, Aug 29, 2003
    #10

  11. Ahrontil Gems: 8/31
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    [spurious nonsense]

    CNN

    How do you like your revenge Sir Belisarius, hot or cold?

    Seriously, he is probably a nice guy. The way the virus is described on the net makes it sound like a thing of beauty that some programmers would find hard to turn their back on.

    It is also interesting to read that the virus is only partially complete, a baby if you will, and somewhere, in a dark corner of the net, code is still flowing into its tiny frame.

    The next time we see it, it will probably be:
    W32.Blaster.Daddys.home . :hahaerr:

    On a side note, I wonder what my neighbors would say about me if I ever got busted for, ohh, I don't know, slagging of Microsoft Corp? :mommy:

    [/spurious nonsense]

    [ August 30, 2003, 05:41: Message edited by: Bluin ]
     
    Ahrontil, Aug 30, 2003
    #11

  12. Blackhawk Gems: 14/31
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    [​IMG] Is the e-mail subject something like:
    • Your Resume
    • My Details
    • Your Details
    • Wicked Screensaver
    • etc...
    There can be a number of "Re:" before any of these.

    If so, this is the SoBig worm. You don't necessarily have it - it tends to forge e-mail headers. The e-mail servers may have sent the failure mails since SoBig put your e-mail address in the e-mail header.

    Since Scam-Mailers may have your e-mail address, when they got infected, it sent out copies of itself making it look like it came from you.

    Here is a article on it at McAfee:

    http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=helpCenter&hcName=sobig

    Look for the file "WINPPR32.EXE"
     
    Blackhawk, Aug 30, 2003
    #12

  13. Lord Moeken Gems: 13/31
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    [​IMG] What is everyone using for Virus Scan? I use Mcafee on one computer and PC-cillin on another.
     
    Lord Moeken, Sep 3, 2003
    #13
  14. Sir Belisarius

    Sir Belisarius Viconia's Boy Toy Distinguished Member ★ SPS Account Holder

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    Lord Moeken?!?!? Blast from the past! How ya been chief? Whittled any rowboats lately?
     
    Sir Belisarius, Sep 3, 2003
    #14

  15. Ahrontil Gems: 8/31
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    AVG Antivirus from Grisoft. Ever since it immediately picked up the presence of a virus on a floppy disk I had been using in college, I have had complete (and probably unjustified) faith in it.
     
    Ahrontil, Sep 4, 2003
    #15

  16. Lord Moeken Gems: 13/31
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    Hey Sir Bel, how's everyone's favourite practitioner of the barristic arts doing? I'm still kicking around, working, travelling and trying to stay away from viruses ;) .
     
    Lord Moeken, Sep 5, 2003
    #16
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