Onslaught of bogus MS Security Bulletins

[Capo Annie]

Is there an uncomplicated way to stop the 15 or 20 e-
mails at a time purporting the "latest Microsoft network
patch"? Obviously someone's address book has been
infected and is sending these out the everyone, but they
are constant and burdensome. Plus, my ISP gets cranky.

Thanks,

CA

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

Anti-virus software. Some anti-spam software will also catch them.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[tj]

Be glad you are only receiving 15-20...I've been receiving
over 150 a day for the last 2-3 weeks. That means that on
Monday mornings I have over 300 email messages to delete!
Our anti-virus software catches and disinfects them but
I've still got to deal with a full mailbox. I've started
using Outlook Rules to move them to my Deleted Items
folder but this whole deal is more than a little
irratating. Email messages in my company need to be
responded to immediately and having to stop what I'm doing
only to find these bogus email messages coming in is
affecting my productivity. Does anyone know how these can
be tracked back to the sender so he/she can clean the
virus from his/her computer??

 

[Malcolm Smith]

No, but I am writing my own Outlook add-in to nuke these buggers.

- Malc
www.dragondrop.com

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

Not possible. As occurs with most recent viruses, the sender is being faked by the virus from among its vast store of addresses. The chances of the sender address that you see on the message actually being related to an infected machine are very low. Sending responses back to the apparent sender only clutters another innocent bystander's Inbox.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Capo Annie]

I've got the AV software, but is there any way to keep
them off my server altogether?

 

[Capo Annie]

My question too!

-----Original Message-----
Be glad you are only receiving 15-20...I've been receiving
over 150 a day for the last 2-3 weeks. That means that on
Monday mornings I have over 300 email messages to delete!
Our anti-virus software catches and disinfects them but
I've still got to deal with a full mailbox. I've started
using Outlook Rules to move them to my Deleted Items
folder but this whole deal is more than a little
irratating. Email messages in my company need to be
responded to immediately and having to stop what I'm doing
only to find these bogus email messages coming in is
affecting my productivity. Does anyone know how these can
be tracked back to the sender so he/she can clean the
virus from his/her computer??

.

 

[Capo Annie]

Thanks, too. Sorry I didn't drill through all the
replies before I responded to your earlier post. I
wonder why mail servers at ISPs couldn't catch these???

-----Original Message-----
Not possible. As occurs with most recent viruses, the

sender is being faked by the virus from among its vast
store of addresses. The chances of the sender address
that you see on the message actually being related to an
infected machine are very low. Sending responses back to
the apparent sender only clutters another innocent
bystander's Inbox.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

You might be able to set your server AV software to refuse incoming mail from certain IP addresses, but sorting out which address might be as much work as other strategies to deal with the onslaught.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

They can if the ISPs acquire and implement the necessary tools and techniques. Some do. It's a cost/resource issue for them, too.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Capo Annie]

-----Original Message-----
They can if the ISPs acquire and implement the necessary

tools and techniques. Some do. It's a cost/resource issue
for them, too.

 

[No Sender's name provided anymore!]

I posted a message on Monday 6th October 2003 morning
morning to the Outlook VBA notice boards. Using my govt.
email address if I have any responses. 5 Minutes later I
started recieving those ugly virus emails. So far I have
recieved over 200 emails since then.

By this, it's obvious that a) Microsoft newsgroups is
selling the email addresses or b) Someone has written a
utility to retrieve all email addresses from the
newsgroups.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

b) It's old news -- been going on for a couple of weeks.

 

[dz]

Yup. It bites, doesn't it?! I had to blow out my email
address and create a new one. However, MS finally
realized what was going on - thus the automatic anonymous
email address listed for all of our questions/replies. I
don't believe they were selling the addresses, but that
someone is grabbing the information programmically. As I
recently found out myself (the hard way), you have to be
careful with EVERY newsgroup you subscribe to now.
Technet is the one that totally messed me up. I don't use
my real email address any more. What a wonderful world we
live in, huh?