Virus alert: eTools files spoofed

[EricNoah]

Scott Mathews just alerted me that he's been sent the klez virus via an attachment that tries to pass itself off as a .chr file. Klez is, as I understand it, a virus that spoofs e-mail addresses and files, so likely it wasn't intentionally sent but rather unintentionally spread. Be sure you use good virus-protection habits, and don't open attachments from people you don't know.

 

[Chaz]

Great, thats all we need haha.
Thanks for the warning Eric.

 

[Matthew The Mage]

I hope they let the poor person know he/she has a virus

 

[Nathanael]

The good news is that there is a fix for the Klez. I know, I had to use it. So don't erase your hard drive if you get it.

I don't know which site has the fix, there were a couple, but a yahoo search will pull it up quickly.

By the way, the Klez takes advantage of a security bug in Microsoft Outlook Express and Win 98, so make sure you have the latest critical updates for those products in order to close up those holes...

 

[noretoc]

Klez is a pretty sneaky worm. Be careful. It finds email addresses on your computer (searches address books, etc) and then send itself and a random program from your computer, to someone in your address book, and uses another email address as the from: so it dosen't look like it is you sending. Be careful opening any executable attachement, even from people you know. Check the body of the email. If the file is one you are not expecting, make sure they tell you what it is in the body of the email. If not, get in touch with the person before opening it, to make sure it is on the up and up.

 

[Eternalknight]

You can find a fix for Klez at www.symantec.com

 

[Henry]

Klez was single-handedly responsible for bringing the virus protection of our company solidly into the twenty-first century.

For that, I thank the worthless pig-dog-son-of-a-muleotaur who came up with this worm.

All I can say is, whoever came up with Klez could make a fortune in internet marketing.

 

[Grazzt]

I hope they let the poor person know he/she has a virus

That's the thing about the Klez virus. It can be addressed from someone who doesnt have the virus.

Klez looks through the address book of the infected PC and picks (at random) an email addy and uses that as the addy in the FROM field. That way it is almost impossible to trace back to the source.

For example, Eric's PC could be infected with the Klez virus and if he had my email addy in his addy book, it could select my email addy, insert it in the FROM field of an email, and send it to you.

To you it would appear an infected email came from me...even though my PC is not infected and I never sent you an email at all. And you could fire off an email to me saying I just sent you a virus and I would have no idea what the hell you were talking about. All the while, Mr Noah's PC is happily sending out emails (with random addys in the From field).

 

[Cergorach]

Unless there's some new 'magical' way to hide your e-mail address, you just have to look a bit deeper. Just looking in Outlook doesn't reveal it though...

 

[Lizard]

The good news is that there is a fix for the Klez.

Yeah. "Don't use Windows".

I do use Windows, unfortunately, but I don't use Outlook, and I don't click on attachments unless I'm damn sure of the FILE TYPE -- don't trust the sender. Never click anything which contains executable code.

Remove Microsoft Lookout!, and show some common sense in handling files, and all will be well.