Re: OT Re: virus warning

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- On Fri, 6/17/11, peregrine@xxxxxxx  wrote:

I've reformatted the boot drives of three computers afflicted with this particularly nasty bugger,
Andy. Each time I tried every other trick I know, and that's a lot of tricks.

The damage is essentially done if you unwittingly approve the faux Microsoft security warning, which
looks a lot like the real thing but contains a misspelling or two and some awkward English syntax.
If you've said yes to that, unless you have mad skillz I don't have, hang it up and reformat.

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O.K., but _what_ is the point of entry ? For most people, most
of the time, it is going to come in as an email attachment -- or
link -- that you open, no ? I happen to use a dedicated webmail
site (online interface), for each of my provider accounts.
That is where the mail resides, on their servers. They have
something that strips out suspicious payloads -- even
sometimes ones that are not actually malware -- before they
turn up in my box. If anything, it tends to be a bit over-
zealous. A certain number of mail items get here that no longer
have any contents ! This does not totally eliminate the need
for some vigilance, but it helps a lot.

And those who are running something other than Windows are not
going to fall prey to a faux MS security thingie.

But thanks for the heads up.


 Jordan