Posted on 11/15/2004 10:41:35 PM PST by Swordmaker
I received the following email today:
hi, [my email user name], I have been receiving this email from [my email address] for a long time which has had a virus in it. My anti-virus has detected it and cleaned it but it seems that you are unable to keep your computer clean from this virus. I'm starting to get a little tired of getting viruses from your computer and/or email address. If you do not clean your system soon, your ISP (Internet Service Providor) will be contacted and told about how your computer has been mailing me viruses for weeks. If it comes to this, your ISP will most likely shut down your internet until the issue can be resolved. If you want to avoid this, I have included a patch that you can run on your computer that will clean your system of this virus. It is very easy to use and does not require any computer knowledge. So if you want to avoid having futher problems, i suggest you run the attached file (configh.exe) to clean your system. sincerely, Gordon
A Google search brought up no less than FOUR identical warnings on the internet written to four different people from four different friendly users. One was from "Felix", another was from "Giuseppi", the next from "Fred" and another was from "Gloria". All were sent within the last two days. I suspect that the exact kind of Trojan the email warns against is producing these warnings.
My ISP stripped out "Gordon's" file, "configh.exe" as a virus. Some of you might receive a similar helpful warning... DON'T execute that file!
All effective Trojan horses have an element of truth to them to lure users into executing them... and the problem of viruses that harvest email addresses or generate random addresses from infected computers is the element here that all of us have seen and fear may happen to our computers. Cleaning your computer of such mal-ware is not as simple as running "Gordon's" or "Felix's" or "Gloria's" Trojan, configh.exe. It requires a GOOD antivirus or antispyware program to really clean your machine... and most likely several of them.
Unless, of course, you like me use a Macintosh...
Not a surprise.
Kind of interesting to see the worm propagate throughout the world - but kind of depressing to know that somebody who had me in their address book got hit.
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