for Feb. 25, 2004

Hi, All;

This week: Spoofing and Zombies

I am ripping two words from the headlines this week to see if I can explain Spoofing and Zombies and what to look for if your PC has been infected.

Spoofing and Zombies are virus types.

Spoofing is where your email name has been captured, either from the Internet or from your own PC. The crook that captures your email name is used as the "From:" address on SPAM. This does a couple of things: one, you get blamed for being a SPAMMER, and you could be charged by the legal system as a SPAMMER; or, two, your ISP could charge you more for sending too many emails from their systems.

Zombies are PC's that have been infected or hacked and turned into a SPAMMING machine, sending out SPAM, and probably viruses, with your Email from your PC with your IP address. It could be very hard to convince some DA that you did not know your PC was a Zombie and that you are not a SPAMMER.

Now that I have scared you into shutting off your PC and never touching it again, here is what to look for. If you start getting returned email from people you have never heard of, you can assume you have a virus and you are being spoofed. The first thing to do is to get and run an anti-virus program and keep it updated or to use an on-line anti-virus program religiously. If you are on the Internet a lot, daily would not be too often; however, getting your own anti-virus program and running an on-line service daily would be too time consuming.

How to stop viruses before they start? As always, do not open any email attachments that come from people you do not know. I think that just looking at an email in a "Preview" screen should not be able to infect your PC.

Never open an attachment that has an "extension" of "exe," "vbs," or "scr," as these are programs and can run if you double click on them. You can save them to your hard drive, then run your anti-virus scan to check if they are infected with any viruses. '

Til next week, (ComputerFAQ#178)


Robert

 

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