New Sober Worm Spoofs FBI, CIA Spreads Fast

TechWeb News ^ | November 22, 2005 | Gregg Keizer

[Cicero]

Right. I haven't gotten any virus warnings in the past few months, but I do get a lot of suspicious attachments, which I just delete unopened.

One of my inlaws was using a laptop in our house, and I noticed he kept getting ad popups on his desktop. He is a smart guy, but he hadn't been aware of the spyware situation. I found about 90 spyware programs on his computer, installed programs to detect and delete them, spent about five hours cleaning it, but ran into one program that wouldn't delete for love or money. I even deleted in at the DOS prompt, but it hid in the registry under constantly changing names and came back after reboot.

I told him about HijackThis, and after a few days he managed to clean it up.

I go over my kids' computers once a month or so, because very few people seem to keep on top of these thngs, let alone the innocent grandparents you mention. It's a real pain.

[tubebender]

I got one yesterday and cox.net didn't flag it as spam. I posted it on a thread. The zip file was a exe. I'm on a Mac so I would have had to enter my pass word. My address in the header looked like a random spin to me?

[tubebender]

There you go talking about me again...

[Eagle9]

There you go talking about me again....

LOL ! But .. but .. but you're not a new user!

Ahhh ... dodge that with the old "compliment to avoid offending" ploy. Yeah, that's the ticket!

[Vinnie]

I encountered that corrupt definition file problem. That was bad.
That has been the only trouble I have had w/ Trend.
I've used them for several years. I hate Nortons anything.

Been getting lots of updates, two today.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

Experienced that, too.

[backhoe]

 

Things you need--(all FREE)
Anti-Virus
AVG Anti-Virus version 7 (free) release available...

 Avast
Firewall
Kerio(Direct Download) Zone Alarm

 If are using zone alarm it may slow your PC. Try Outpost Firewall http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost or Sygate Firewall http://www.sygate.com/ both have FREE and Pro versions and are heads above ZA.
Misc.
IE Spyads SpywareBlaster Spyware Guard
Windows Update- you must keep updated, it is the start of a secure system-
get all CRITICAL Updates

Things you want(Still Free)
 

  I use Firefox. Click the link and give it a try.

 

 

Ad-Aware
Spybot S&D

SpywareBlaster
MS MVP Hosts file

Mike Lin's Homepage and get the Startup Control Panel and Startup Monitor tools.

 

The best forum for malware removal:

-SWI Forums-

 

 
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315720/posts

 Microsoft Releases Anti-Spyware Beta 1 To Public Today.
Microsoft.com ^

 

=================================================

 

 Browser Wars, take two
various FR links | 12-22-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1306815/posts

...and let your compiler of links drop out of Lurk & Link mode for comment and advice:


Keep your OS updated & patched.

Run a hardware firewall-- with today's LAN's, it's easy. You need a hardware firewall.

[ShadowAce]

[chronic_loser]

My wife got that email. She said "what do you think about that?" and I said, "well, do you REALLY think that if we were involved in something important to have the fbi contact us, that they would contact us by email?" she got a real weird look on her face and then burst out laughing. I said "go ahead and click on that zip file attachment" She said, "nothing happened" I said "THAT's why we run linux, babe."

[JeffAtlanta]

What do you like better about Sygate or Outpost firewall than Zone Alarm?

Also, I'm curious if you feel that a standard router is a good enough hardware firewall.

[backhoe]

"What do you like better about Sygate or Outpost firewall than Zone Alarm?
Also, I'm curious if you feel that a standard router is a good enough hardware firewall."

---

I run older machines, and Zone Alarm seemed to slow them more- might not be a problem with a hot ( gigahertz ) PC.

I use an Asante' FR1004, which has firewalls in both directions- in & out. Far as I know, all modern routers double as firewalls- just be sure to change the password from the default, and poke around the internal settings to be sure WAN ( wide area network ) hasn't been enabled by default.

A more detailed and technical explanation can be found at Gibson Reasearch:

http://grc.com/default.htm

[Calvin Locke]

I've been getting a bunch too, but in the junk mail folder. Didn't recognize any of the senders, and they were all 75Kb.

Makes them easier to spot and delete.

[Ethrane]

Yup...that's them.

The e-mails were all huge...about 75kb. My mcAfee recognized them with a warning.

Today, the number dropped off, and the earthlink server blocked them.