 |
| Welcome
Sign Up Log On |
|
|
“Klez is an Impressive Little Bug” |
|||
| From: | Seth Dillingham | In Response To: | Top of Thread. |
| Date Posted: | Sunday, May 5, 2002 6:48:06 PM | Replies: | 2 |
| Enclosures: | None. | ||
It seems that almost all of my Windows-using friends and family (a.k.a. "the black sheep" or "the lost sheep") have been infected by the Klez virus (actually it's both a worm and a virus). Corinne, Jed, and I have all received it numerous times.
This is a powerful little piece of code with two unusual features. First, when it sends copies of itself to everybody in your address book it will sometimes appear to send the messages from someone randomly chosen from the address book, thus making it very difficult for average computer users to figure out who is and isn't infected. Second, it accomplishes the above by sending the messages with its own, built-in SMTP engine. That means it doesn't ask Outlook to send the mail.
It's not clear (to me) if the virus has the smarts to bypass your mail server as well as your mail client -- probably not -- but it doesn't really matter. This is a smart little bug.
Update: I forgot about a third "feature" of this lovely bug. You don't actually have to open any attachments for it to spread, you only have to read the email. Microsoft has a patch for that, but hardly anybody keeps up to date with their patches. (Who has time!?)
There are no trackbacks.
|
TruerWords
is Seth Dillingham's personal web site. From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. - WC |
