Warning: insiduous e-mail

[brian]

I've had two of these this morning alone to my Hotmail account.

The sender shows "Mail Delivery system" (or similar) and claims to be a returned message you sent but that the system couldn't deliver.

And it includes a 101k attachment, with the file extension ".pif"

If you receive a similar message then under no circumstances should you open the attachment - it is almost certainly a virus.

It seems that virus distribution hit a new low - a warning for all of you.

[Twelve]

Thank you very much for the warning, Bryan...


12

[brian]

I don't normally do e-mail warnings - usually it's common sense not to download attachments. But as it pretends to be from your own mailing software then that makes it particularly insiduous.

I've also just found that the virus has been making headlines today:

The havoc caused by the Sobig Windows virus looks set to continue into the weekend.
The virus has generated so much e-mail that many inboxes are now completely full and are bouncing back new messages which is only adding to the problems Sobig is causing.

Net giant AOL said it had stopped more than 23 million copies of the virus and e-mail filtering firm MessageLabs said it had caught more than three million.

Security firms warn that the virus has a payload that is set to trigger on 22 August that could turn infected PCs into spam relays.

Hundreds of thousands of PCs appear to be infected by the Sobig F virus, the sixth variant of a malicious program that first appeared in January this year.

Anti-virus firms were surprised at the success that Sobig has enjoyed as it relies on tricking people into opening it and clicking on its attachment to spread rather than via any technological tricks.

Security experts speculate that the virus was written to order for spammers who want to find a way to spread their unwanted commercial e-mails without fear of being traced.

The virus may get a further boost on Monday when many people in the US return to work after the holiday period.

The web seems to have caught out a lot of people in China. About 30% of China's net users, about 20 million people, have been infected by the virus according to figures collected by Chinese security firm Beijing Rising Technology Shareholding Co.

The company put an unprotected PC on the net which was flooded with 5,000 Sobig messages within three hours.

"We haven't seen anything spread so fast," said a spokeswoman for Rising Technology. "It could get worse because there's very limited awareness of viruses and preventive measures."

Others suffered the effects of the virus too.

E-mail servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were congested by the amount of messages Sobig created and defence firm Lockheed Martin said that although less than 1% of its PCs were infected this still caused disruption on its network.

[littlemissattitude]

Thanks for the reminder. Basically, I never open an e-mail unless I recognize the sender. Even then, if the subject line seems hinky (for example, something the person wouldn't normally say) or if there is no subject line at all, I often won't open the mail until I have e-mailed the person to ask them if they have sent me something.

I guess I'm kind of paranoid when it comes to computer viruses.

[brian]

Absolutely need to be! I've had quite a few e-mails sent with attachments that were blatantly viruses. Usually spam is very easy to spot, though I route everything through Hotmail as that has a McAffee viruscan on everything anyway.

I did actually recieve an e-mail - from an unknown address - claimnig that I was infected by Sobig.f. I scanned and was absolutely clear.

In case anyone is not sure, here's a page where you can download a scan scpeifically for the Sobig.f virus:

http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/sobig_f.shtml

A special point to note is that if you are running a Firewall then you can easily block the effects of the Sobig.f virus anyway - there's a free Firewall available at www.zonalarm.com - that's one I use myself.