Re: speaking of viruses

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 11:21 PM
Subject: speaking of viruses

>
> Over the past month I must have gotten 40 or 50 messages
"from Microsoft,"
> subject line "use this patch immediately." I gather the
"patch" is a
> virus that wipes out your teeth, liver & lights. I mention
it because on
> this server I get mostly list mail, so I figure the virus
came from some
> one or ones on the list. If you didn't get yours yet -- be
warned.
>
> J.
  I think this is the Swen worm. See any of the usual virus
sites for details. Essentially it sends itself to any
address ic can find in Outlook or Outlook Express. It has
its own SMTP server so it can completely fake headers.
Microsoft has had a fix for it for months, see their site
for it. Any up to date virus program will catch it.
  A couple of months ago when this was in full flower I was
getting over 100 worm messages an hour. This consituted
essentially a denial of service for me since I have a 10Mb
mail box limit at Earthlink. The worm messages run 142 or
156 kb each to it doesn't take a lot of them to fill the
mailbox and cause it to send error messages. The rate of
these has fallen off to maybe fifty a day so they are
managable. Earthlink absolutely refuses to filter them at
server level. They are either very stupid or very good at
pretending to be stupid.
  Enough.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com