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"Virus Hoax:
Malicious Code Example"
Virus Hoax Warnings: Page 36
of 39
!000 Hoax
December 2001
I was kind of hoping that this one would die of its own accord, but
no such luck. While not really false, this list of instructions does
not really help you prevent infections and could fool you into being
careless. For the few worms that remote control your Outlook
application, this would tell you that you had already spammed the
world with who knows how many worm infected e-mails. For the current
crop of worms that spread via e-mail, which contain their own
internal mailer, this would do nothing. Your time would be much
better spent installing a good antivirus program and keeping it
updated.
A variant of this says to use AAAAAAA for the user's name and
WormAlert@somewhere.com as the address. Unfortunately, somewhere.com
is a real domain and now they are getting hammered by every
infected machine that uses this "Fix!" I'm sure they would like it
to stop.
Remember, don't run attachments that you were not expecting to
receive, even those that appear to have been sent by a friend.
Verify them first with the friend before running them (assuming you
really trust the friend). Here is a very helpful tip concerning worm
viruses you could get in an email:
As you may know, if a worm virus gets into your computer, it heads
straight for your email address book and sends itself to everyone in
there, thus infecting all your friends and associates. This tip
won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will
stop it from using your address book to spread itself further, and
it will alert you to the fact that a worm virus has gotten into your
system.
Here's what you do:
1. Open your address book and add a "New Contact" just as you would
do if you were adding someone to your list of email addresses;
2. In the window where you would type your contact's first name,
type !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros);
3. In the box where you would enter the email address, type
WormAlert;
4. Click Add;
5. Then, click OK.
Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The name !000 will
appear at the top of your email list as entry number:
A. This is the first email address a worm virus will find when it
tries to send all of your friends a virus infected email. But
because the 1st email address is invalid, it will be undeliverable,
and the worm virus stops any further attempts to access your address
book.
B. The second advantage of this tip is that you will be notified
when an email cannot be delivered because of an invalid email
address. You will receive an email telling you that your email to
"WormAlert" could not be delivered. If you get this message, you'll
know right away that you've got a worm virus in your system. You
can then take the appropriate steps to get rid of it. Just knowing
that you even have a virus is half the battle.
This is a very helpful tip, so pass it on.
Copyright 2004 by Jay Jennings
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