Randy Cassingham's Blog

I absolutely cannot believe how fast the "sircam" virus is spreading. Why is that dumb? Let's put it this way: people still run MS LookOut! (er... I guess it's called "Outlook", isn't it?) as their mail program despite that it again and again and again proves to be too week to avoid trojan horses like sircam (and "I love you" and "Snow White" And... AND...!! How many more until people dump it?!)

Well, that crappy program and the people who run other mailers, yet seem to think that this time this unsolicited attached program will be safe and go run it. Hello? Do not ever run a program that comes to you by e-mail without absolutely knowing what it is first. And maybe not even then. It is, quite bluntly stated, stupid to open attached binary files, or to have an e-mail program that does it for you, when you don't know what they are. Just assume it's a virus and carefully delete it.

If you even think your computer might be infected because you even maybe went and clicked on a file attached to a message saying "Hi! How are you? I send you this file in order to have your advice" (do your friends really write like that?), don't do anything else until close your e-mail program and go get info on this virus -- your system probably is infected. Especially if you can't figure out why your modem seems so dang busy lately (I must have received hundreds of copies of the 300ish-K trojan virus program from scores of people by the time I was able to program my site to route them straight to the trash).

Anyway, what I got a real chuckle at was of the few people who sent me an "urgent notice" saying that "TRUE has the sircam virus!" was that two of them sent me the Symantec clean-up program so I could "cure" my computer! Forget that long-time readers should realize that I'm at least unlikely to get a virus (at least I hope fans would realize I'm not dumb enough to run attached programs, nor dumb enough to have mailer software that does it for me), I'm also not dumb enough to allow the Lyris software to accept postings through the True list without them being checked first. That's right: even I cannot post through my own distribution lists without a "moderator" giving it the OK. (Well sure: I'm also the moderator, but viruses aside, that means that some spammer can't just forge my return address and send stuff through the lists.)

While it's thoughtful in a way for readers who think I have a virus to send me a clean-up program, think about this: there are people out there that think the way to help people that were dumb or gullible enough to click on an attached executable file is to send them an attached executable to clean it up! Hell: if I were a virus writer, that would be the way I'd send it around. "Have you heard about the new 'Idiot Virus'? It's just terrible!! But the commercial virus scanners can't detect it! The special attached program will check your system to see if you have it, will clean it up if it's there, and will keep you from getting it in the future! Run it immediately!" And you know what? A lot of people would. And it would put up a screen to tell them why it's called the "Idiot Virus"....

Sadly, later there were a bunch of viruses that did exactly as I described, except that they don't tell you you're an idiot. Instead, they turn your computer into a slave, using it to send spam out to thousands of people. That's right: now the victims of viruses aren't just idiots who run virus programs, even those of us smart enough to never get a virus are all victims, because we get more and more spam because of such stupid actions -- and evil virus writers. If this is news to you, you need to read my Spam Primer -- carefully!