>>Stefan Persson wrote:
> >>
> >> A member of this list, Arjun Aggatwal, sent me a message containing
> >>
> >>a virus. Has anyone else received the same virus?
>
>Michael Everson wrote in reponse:
>Nope. I use a Macintosh.
[Hohberger, Clive] writes:
And this I also why I use Eudora 5 together with Norton Antivirus 2001,
rather than Outlook, at least on my personal home PC.
**********
Computer viruses were originally developed as a military weapon starting in
the late 50's and early 60's, contrary to what many self-agrandizing hackers
think. The Internet just made mass infection possible, so they became more
visible, and created a forum for public display by virus virtuosi...
Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express are everybody's favorite virus target.
That's because its the biggest and most symbolic target around, the World
Trade Center of E-mail programs. To the hacker community, writing a virus
for Eudora or for a MacIntosh would have "Negative Glory"; like crashing an
airplane into an outhouse (privy, loo, whatever...)
As a general rule, never open any attachment which is an unknown executable
(.exe including self-extracting ZIP files), Visual basic File (.vbs), or
screen saver file (.scr). All of these file types are well know for their
ability to inject viruses... even from a name you recognize. When in doubt,
send back an E-mail, confirming that they really deliberately send this to
you; as remailer viruses like BADTRANS will send copies of themselves out to
everyone on your Outlook mailing list. Some viruses are snaeky and don't
even leave copies of these autogenerated messages in the "Sent Items" file.
And like Arjun, you may only find out when your collegues start telling
you... long after the damage is done.
Sorry if I'm repeating old news...
Clive
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Dec 11 2001 - 15:26:26 EST