From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Dec 05 2001 - 09:08:27 MST
I don't know if the list has fallen to virus attacks but
following up on Michael's note, I'm offering up:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/reuters20011205_211.html
Also, at least one extropian accidentally propagated the
WORM_BADTRANS.B Virus on Monday. See:
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/w32badtransb.html
I wasn't infected because I don't have #*!&%#* MS Outlook
on my machine -- even though I *stupidly* transferred the
attachment from UNIX to Windows and clicked on the file.
I mean, after all, you can trust attachments from Extropians
can't you?
At any rate, anyone else who is an extropian might also be
getting attacked by this and so be *very* careful of incoming
messages. The message was ~45K in size, had no subject line
and the attachment was Pics.DOC.scr (but it can apparently have
different names). I think this is one of the more insidious
viruses since you don't have to do much to forward it apparently.
Also beware the sources of these are starting to use things like
AIM to forward the viruses as well.
I hearby request that *ANYONE* on the list who uses Microsoft
Outlook as their email program and who happens to have my email
address in their Address Book *PLEASE* REMOVE it.
I'd also recommend that if you know anyone who uses MS Outlook
and you are in *their* address book that you get yourself
removed from it. The lesson to be learned here is that
you are only as safe as "The Weakest Link". If you need
my address (or other addresses of extropians) make up
an HTML file with "mailto:" URLs in it and then put it
someplace obscure in your directory structure -- not
"My Documents" -- since the viruses are clever enough
now to scan that for more email addresses. If you
want to really help protect us encrypt the file because
its only a matter of time before the viruses will scan
every file on the machine looking for email addresses.
Also, as a "heads up" -- the Love Bug cost an estimated
$8.75 Billion (~= 50% of the NIH Budget) in losses.
Do your part to be part of the solution and not part
of the problem.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:12:22 MST