help!! - microsoft update mail

[Christine]

hi, i am being bombarded on a daily basis with up to 25
emails from what appears to be various individuals
regarding Microsoft update, critical update, new internet
critical pack, latest internet update. I have deleted
all these so far and used the block sender option against
most of them. I now keep getting warnings and delivery
of item was not sucessful even though i have not sent any
emails to these companies. Are the two incidents
related? is there any cause for concern? I am a little
concerned regarding the recent problems of emails
arriving under the guise of genuine Microsoft updates. I
use the Windows Update facility in control panel to
download these items. Do you think the emails are
genuine. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

 

[purplehaz]

The emails are fake, ms never sends attachments. They are viruses. Just
delete them and ignore. Someone either has you in their address book and
they got infected or they just choose your email address to use in spoofing
where it really comes from, thus the messages about unsuccessful deliveries
when you sent nothing. Not much you can do about it. It should stop
eventually. I got a few for a couple of days and then it stopped.

 

[Jim Macklin]

It is the w32/swen-mm virus being sent by infected
computers. Do not open them.
MS never emails attachments and they won't email you unless
you signed up for notification. Even then all MS says is
that there is an update available and you should go to the
regular update site to get it.

You can see more details about viruses, including this one
by looking on the a/v web sites:
www.mcafee.com (virus information tab) www.sarc.com
and www.nai.com (security) NAI is part of McAfee and SARC is
Norton.


| hi, i am being bombarded on a daily basis with up to 25
| emails from what appears to be various individuals
| regarding Microsoft update, critical update, new internet
| critical pack, latest internet update. I have deleted
| all these so far and used the block sender option against
| most of them. I now keep getting warnings and delivery
| of item was not sucessful even though i have not sent any
| emails to these companies. Are the two incidents
| related? is there any cause for concern? I am a little
| concerned regarding the recent problems of emails
| arriving under the guise of genuine Microsoft updates. I
| use the Windows Update facility in control panel to
| download these items. Do you think the emails are
| genuine. Any help is appreciated.
|
| Thanks

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

What you received is either a very common malicious hoax or the
output of a computer infected by one of several wide-spread, mass
emailing worms. The most widely-known are:

W32.Swen.A_mm
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/[email protected]

W32.Dumaru_mm
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/[email protected]

W32.Gibe_mm
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/[email protected]

Microsoft never has, does not currently, and never will email
unsolicited security patches. At the most, if, and only if, you
subscribe to their security notification newsletter, they will send
you an email informing you that a new patch is available for
downloading.

Microsoft Policies on Software Distribution
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url=/technet/security/policy/swdist.asp

Information on Bogus Microsoft Security Bulletin Emails
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/news/patch_hoax.asp

Any and all legitimate patches and updates are readily available
at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/. (Notice that this is the true
URL, rather than the bogus one that may have been contained in the
email you received.) Any messages that point to any other source(s) or
claim to have the patch attached are bogus.

You're receiving these emails because your email address is in
the address book of someone infected with a worm, and/or because you
posted your real email address somewhere on-line, either in a forum
accessible to the public and spambots, such as Usenet, or on an
untrustworthy web site that subsequently sold your address as part of
a mailing list. One thing you can do is notify _everyone_ with whom
you've ever corresponded via email that one or more of them may be
infected with a mass emailing worm, and should take the appropriate
steps.

There's probably no way of blocking all of the bogus messages, but
you can greatly reduce the number you get by creating a rule, based
upon the most commonly used subject lines, to delete the emails from
the server without ever downloading them.


Bruce Chambers

--
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