Hi James, I received this email from a friend, maybe it will help:
VIRUS ALERT!
The W32.Sober.X@mm virus is propagating like a digital rabbit and it's
driving me (and everyone else) with an e-mail account crazy. Most of the
emails will end up in your bulk folder, but not all. The email size is about
75K.
This is one of the fastest spreading viruses in a long time. It's clever -
it uses subject lines like:
Your IP was logged
You visit illegal websites
Your Password
Registration Confirmation
smtp mail failed
Mail delivery failed
hi, ive a new mail address
Paris Hilton & Nicole Richie
The first two subject lines listed above have a "from" address of either
@fbi.gov or CIA.gov. The body tells you that you've been on illegal websites
and you need to fill out the attached questionnaire (or something to that
effect).
The other e-mails are equally cleaver and try to trick people into running
the .zip attachment to get their "password", "registration", "Paris Hilton",
or whatever.
When you run the zip attachment, you'll get an error message and the virus
will infect your computer. From there, it will start mass e-mailing every
address it can find and attempt to manipulate your AV software.
For example, if Norton is installed, it tries to override the Live Update
feature. Once in control, if Live Update is run, one of these message boxes
will come up:
Thank you for using LiveUpdate. All of the Symantec products
and components are currently up-to-date.
OR
No Connection!
Either way, that's the virus talking, not Live Update. Clever huh?
Finally, if you're still infected on Jan 5, 2006, the virus will attempt to
download and run a malicious file that does who-knows-what to your computer.
So, if you haven't updated your virus definitions lately, now would be a
good time.
If you suspect you're infected, Symantec has a handy removal tool at their
website (along with more info on this worm):
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/[email protected]
Remember the golden rule - NEVER EVER open an attachment that you're not
expecting - especially if this attachment is in the form of a zip or exe
file!! Oldest trick in the virus book and thousands are falling for it again.
Don't be one of 'em
