MORE VIRUS..Deliberate attack on PM!!!

Rich, I gave you an explanation in the mod forum, you've probably dealt with it by now anyway.

I haven't had anymore aimed attacks, but I have a feeling I know why. I gave access to some folks to "some" of our stats, these folks deal with this kind of thing. They've visited us and got the information they needed. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
Here's a freeware program that heps to keep this stuff off your harddrive to beging with. Go to www.mailwasher.net and download mailwasher. This program will configure to your ISP account and then you open it when youn open your browser. It does several pretty neat things. First, it shows you all the mail on the server waiting for you. Those you don't recognize can be deleted there without coming anywhere near your PC. Second, you can "bounce" the sender a reply that your e-mail acount is no longer valid ( a MAILER-DAEMON message) which gets rid of SPAM.
I've been running AVG, using mailwasher before ALL my e-mail checks, doing a weekly scan on housecall from the outside and have been virus free for four weeks now.
 
Thanks Lance for that program, I'm playing with it right now, although for some reason I can't get it to display incoming mail yet, all the POP3 and SMTP configurations are correct, I disabled my outlook auto check, the passwords are correct, everything is ok it seems. Still not bringing up the mail. I've set it to check the server every minute, it seems to be doing just that but nada.

Rich, good news then! Glad that AVG helped. It's a great program.

Edit: Oh yeah, just got it working, thanks Lance. This is a pretty sweet program. It intercepts your email allowing you to do a number of things. First, it allows you to view before opening, it allows you to "bounce" your email back to spammers or unwanted senders by delivering a "user unknown" message to whoever sent it. You also have an option of viewing the extended header, and what IP address it was sent from. It's pretty neat, here's the link again for Mailwasher: Mailwasher
 
Guys,

Lately, there's been lots to be wary of. I thought someone broke into my computer and somehow got my credit card numbers and ordered a bunch of stuff. Turns out it was a security breach on the other end. A company employee we were told. Hard to guard against.

Anyway, not knowing what was going on, I installed the zonealarm firewall program. My eyes have been opened. I get hits from all over the world...people trying to probe for whatever reason...good or evil. Should have done that long ago. I was warned by a friend but didn't listen.

Also, I use the AVG program. Fom what I can see, it's much better than what Norton offers.

I'll post links to zonealarm and a good security check website later. I'm out of time this morning.

Terry
 
My credit card got stolen once, I didn't even report it for 3 months...the people who had it were spendig a LOT less than my wife was with it...actually saved me money. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif Randy
 
LOL Randy...I can feel your pain.

Terry, good idea on the firewall, especially if you're on a dsl or a cable line. Zonealarm is a good program, as is BlackIce Defender. I have the latter although it's off due to being on a router. The router has a hardware firewall that's much more secure.

A good website for checking your open ports is:

Dsl Reports

Zone Alarm can be had at Download.Com
 
A friend sent me a link to "Shields Up",by Steve Gibson. Once there, the site runs you through a series of tests of your security, both outgoing and incoming data. They rated zone alarm the best and they were a little critical of some of the others.

Bob, if I send you that link, could you post it here? I'm not sure how to do it. It's a bit of a complicated link and I wouldn't want to get it wrong.

I suppose those that are interested could go to google and search for that site.

Terry
 
Terry, terribly sorry guy, I've been hammered getting the Tech Section up, just got another new addition, how to make your own e-caller....so I've been kinda busy. Some things just fall through the cracks sometimes and I apologize.

Send me that link and I'll fire it up for you. Again, please accept my apologies.
 
Hey you might try this one of the tech people at work sent this to me about a month ago...

Subject: "Virus Alert Trick - (Prevents Virus Attacks)"

COMPUTER TRICKERY

This was in the last issue of "P C World" magazine. It does work! As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your email address book and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates.

This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do:

First: Open your address book and click on "new contact" or "new person" just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses.

Second: In the window where you would type your friend's FIRST name,type in !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros).
In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type in WormAlert@bob.com (actually any @.com will work)

Third: Then complete everything by clicking add, enter, OK, etc.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: the "name" !000 will be placed at the top of your address book as entry #1. This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends.

But when it tries to send itself to !000, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered (WormAlert). If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be infected.

Here's the second great advantage of this method: If an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your InBox almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to WormAlert could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it.

Pretty slick, huh?

If everybody you know does this, then you needn't ever worry about opening mail from friends. Pass this on to your friends.


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I haven't received anything, but then I use a commercial email program, and NEVER Outlook or Outlook Express.
 
Redfrog there is another kind of coyote, it is the quick but dead anyway, ( well sometimes) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
TexasBoars had a fullscale email waged on it a couple of months ago.

The folks who host the site said they had never seen anything like it. I think they have it all under control now.

I was getting 10 to 50 emails a day during this time also that were infected.

They have finally stopped.

After the idiots doing it left a mesage on the baords along with their ISP for some reason all the crap stopped.
 
I got an e-mail yesterday at yahoo asking me how I was doing. Didn't recognize the sender and there was no attachments. Like an idiot, I would have probably opened it. Thanks for the heads up.
 
By night, I look for yotes.

By day, I'm a serious web site and software developer. Amigos, it is so easy to place these types of viruses and to use someone else's e-mail address as the sender it would make your head spin. Microsoft's security scheme is virtually non-existent.

There is no real defense against it. The only surprising thing is that it doesn't happen more often.
 
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