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Muddy Waters

I got an e-mail Just like Paul Fs last week no subject! Home income stuff.

2/16/2012 6:05:47 PM

El Paso TX.

Yep once there is one person's that get hijacked then any others who received the message and opened the attachment that came with the first soon become the next victim -- That's how these things keep passing on. (you open the file they send along with the message and it infects your system and then takes all of your contacts and resends a message to all of them - and so on and so on.)

2/16/2012 6:53:41 PM

Owensboro, Ky.

Solution??? Don't open the file? Peace, Wayne

2/16/2012 11:34:28 PM

Finland/Estonia, Island of Saaremaa

Please do not panic on spoofing a name you know.

If you get mail from some one you know and that proves to be spam, it does not mean his/her email is "hijacked" and that those emails are sent from his/her computer. And normally the infection does not go like JDFan says. That can be done so much easier. Spoofing explained in this thread in the later parts:

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/msgboard/ViewThread.asp?b=3&p=427116

If the spammer somehow gets your email address, spamming people with email you as a recepient is as easy as breathing. In practice the only way to stop this is changing your email address and keep not posting it as such to openly readable places like this message board.Use some smoke screen with you email address.

As I have been active on several internet places for years and spammers have gathered my email (since I did not hide the address in the beginning) I get almost every morning email for example from myself (lol) offering me an incredible job etc. I have now other addresses but have to keep also the original one for a reason, so it keeps on collecting spam and spoofed emails. The other addresses never.

Good advice like said is not to open them.If you are not sure and need to open do not at least open the attachment(may contain trojan/backdoor etc), and never press a link placed in the email, as it will be another spam message or a phishing attempt.

Used to work 5 year for the industry (for the good guys) and I know it is really hard (if not impossible) to shut down/prevent spoofing and spamming. It is international as internet does not know boarders and many times coming from countries where there are no laws on this or the police does not care or have skills and time to act.

2/17/2012 1:46:47 AM

Boise City, Oklahoma, USA

One reason I like Gmail as a mail client... it does not automatically open/display a message, and if you put cursor over the 'from' it gives you the actual email address (what is listed may not be the same thing) that 'sent' this to you, so you can tell if it's a fake and delete without opening or displaying anything. A few other mail clients can be set this way as well, it's the safer way to do your email!

I have had my main email for over ten years and the times I've had to sit out a major spoof are legion.

Symantec recently admitted that some of the new virii change their 'signature' as they move from system to system; and the anti virus companies are putting out according to which versions they are alerted to... and if it changes on each new victim, until those are heard about, they're running freely. blaugh. Guess we can always go back to paper, pencil, envelope, and stamp?

2/17/2012 3:01:43 AM

Finland/Estonia, Island of Saaremaa

Most of the prevention is not anymore so much based on signature recognition, this was the case already 3 years ago. Signature recognition is done more by the family agains the older viruses. Major part is now heuristic (sandboxing etc) detection and using cloud based databases for real time enquitries, everytime an unknown piece of code is executed. It is impossible to keep up with signature recognition with individual viruses as they come at the pace of many new in a minute, more than 1M a year (like you OkieGal said they are changing rapidly) and signature updates normally max 6 times a day to individual computers. All the AV vendors are co-operating with the AV detection side, even if they may compete hard commercially.

So much for education about the subject from me. Normal common sense and carefullnes with an real-time installed security suite is enough. My point is not to scare people needlesly telling that the they are "hijacked". It is the opposite: if your computer is hijacked, they do not want you to know, keep as silent as possible and just want to use it as a part or their ecosystem.

2/17/2012 3:22:11 AM

Muddy Waters

Your first post sounds good Juha,Your 2nd post you might as well be speaking Chinese,lol

2/17/2012 7:37:52 AM

Muddy Waters

Ok this hijacker is stealing my inbox I just found in empty.This is the second time.The sent box is still full.Im guessing this is what there stealing. DONT OPEN ANYTHING FROM ME WITHOUT A SUBJECT ON IT

2/17/2012 8:31:02 AM

Finland/Estonia, Island of Saaremaa

Handy, that was to answer to OkieGal who referred to signatures (like fingerprints) of viruses, which AV software is using to detect viruses as one of the methods. Sorry for that.

Gotta then believe you have got something inside your PC.... but that is a rare case that someone breaks to computer only to send email in one's name as that can be done much easier just by knowing your email address.

Try the online scanner http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/labs_global/removal/online-scanner or Easyclean http://download.f-secure.com/estore/fseasyclean.exe to clean your PC. If you got something inside, they should find.

2/17/2012 9:57:15 AM