Date:         Tue, 25 Sep 2001 17:12:05 -0400
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Re: spammed after sending to the list ?
Comments: To: Mick Kalber <hotlava@INTERPAC.NET>
In-Reply-To:  <002501c145f9$dfa9b960$642bd5d1@hotlava>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 03:40 PM 9/25/2001, Mick Kalber wrote:
>But it is my understanding (and experience) that if you
>do not open it it will not harm your computer nor self-replicate, correct?

Correct.  Snowhite depends primarily on "social engineering" to actually
infect your machine, i.e. on the hope that you'll be titillated by the
expected dirty picture or what-have-you and will run the attachment.

OTOH there are other much newer worms like NIMDA which can under some
circumstances run without your consent.  You're running Outlook Express
5.0x -- you need to be sure that your Internet Explorer is updated to at
least IE 5.01 SP2 or IE 5.5 SP2 to avoid being extremely vulnerable to
Nimda.  See
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-027.asp
and/or run the Windows Update tool.  This vulnerability actually applies to
*any* mail software that uses Internet Explorer to render HTML mail --
including Eudora if it's set to use the Microsoft Browser.

I am getting truly sick of this stuff -- and this is my trade, more or
less.  I don't know how ordinary users can keep up with the flood of
ingenious new attacks, except by devoting a lot more attention to it than
anybody wants to.

david

David Beierl - Providence, RI
  http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"