Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Virus-"southerners and snow"

At 1:34 PM -0700 10/7/02, superpat wrote:
> there is a virus showing sender as Robert and Carla Lawson with the 
> subject being "RC-Southerners and Snow"
> Do not open.....it is virus infected.
> Thank goodness that I just updated my anti virus software this morning .
> I am not at all computer litereate but here is a rhetorical question.
> What possible satisfaction would someone get sending infected 
> messages. And who does it and how do they do it?
> Think I will go ride my horse....
> Pat

There are lots of different kinds of viruses that can be transmitted. 
They all come in via "attachments", that can have extensions of .exe, 
.scr, or .pif.  A user has to open the attachment in order to invoke 
the virus, or if their e-mail is set to "auto-open", like Outlook 
Express is usually set to do, then the virus is in operation and 
depending on the type, it's transparent to the user.

It used to be the scariest/worst viruses were boot track and memory ones.

The most sophisticated ones aren't deliberately invoked.  Those 
include bugbear and Klez.  "Trojan horses" and/or "worms" do the most 
insidious damage, and usually anymore not just one thing, but a host 
of bad behaviors--opening your computer to invasion from outside, 
sending mail *from* a random someone in your e-mail address book to 
another random someone, buggering up essential operating system 
files, etc.

Theories range about who is writing these viruses.  Range from 
programmers that are just showing off, programmers in 3rd world 
countries with a connection to the Internet and not much el$e, to 
true info-terrorists.

Those of us with Macs aren't affected but we can be "carriers", a la 
Typhoid Mary.  If you are a PC user, then using the virus update 
software EVERY boot-up is important if you are on the Internet much.

What happens if a new virus is introduced in between Live Updates? 
And you "invoke" it?  That can be very bad, or might something you 
won't even notice until the next morning's live update finds it...

Lynne
whose Mac runs under Unix now, at least it has firewall software built-in

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