Sprechen Sie Deutsches...?
No I don't speak German, but I feel as if I should in the last several days. Someone I know, or more specifically who knows me, has been a naughty little computer user and has contracted the w32.sober.p@mm virus. Someone I know is on the cutting edge of virus susceptability for this new variant of the old Sober virus which was just noted by McAfee and other security agents today. I've been getting 20 or 30 virus generated emails for the last two days.
As far as I've read the virus is particularly virulent, but not particularly dangerous. Like so many of these "trojans" this bug generates emails from the infected machine, using email addresses it picks up off the host computer. Thus, my two semi-private email addresses residing on some friend or acquaintance's system are fair game for these fascinating messages......in German. Translating them on BabelFish I learned that they all have a political message with a link to one of many German news sources. The emails have no infected attachements so are nothing more than a big nuisance. The method of infection, I suppose, is by downloading some little gem from an infected website.
When I first started receiving these messages my first thought was that someone with a political agenda had "hacked" the website of German blogger David at his Medienkritik website and somehow gotten access to commentors email addresses. But today, as the German tiatribes continued pouring in to my mailbox I did a little research on Google by typing in some of the text from a spam email and sure enough I got a match which referenced the new virus strain.
So, if you are reading this and have my email address on your machine you might think about checking to see if you have contracted this dread German virus. I, and others would appreciate it. If your virus program is hopelessly out of date or you don't have one, you can go to McAfee.Com and download their "Stinger" tool which will take care of 53 of the most common viruses including the Sober p@mm.
Here's what the message looks like. I got this one while I was typing this report, although this is just one of many versions some with considerably more text, but all with a link to a German website..
No I don't speak German, but I feel as if I should in the last several days. Someone I know, or more specifically who knows me, has been a naughty little computer user and has contracted the w32.sober.p@mm virus. Someone I know is on the cutting edge of virus susceptability for this new variant of the old Sober virus which was just noted by McAfee and other security agents today. I've been getting 20 or 30 virus generated emails for the last two days.
As far as I've read the virus is particularly virulent, but not particularly dangerous. Like so many of these "trojans" this bug generates emails from the infected machine, using email addresses it picks up off the host computer. Thus, my two semi-private email addresses residing on some friend or acquaintance's system are fair game for these fascinating messages......in German. Translating them on BabelFish I learned that they all have a political message with a link to one of many German news sources. The emails have no infected attachements so are nothing more than a big nuisance. The method of infection, I suppose, is by downloading some little gem from an infected website.
When I first started receiving these messages my first thought was that someone with a political agenda had "hacked" the website of German blogger David at his Medienkritik website and somehow gotten access to commentors email addresses. But today, as the German tiatribes continued pouring in to my mailbox I did a little research on Google by typing in some of the text from a spam email and sure enough I got a match which referenced the new virus strain.
So, if you are reading this and have my email address on your machine you might think about checking to see if you have contracted this dread German virus. I, and others would appreciate it. If your virus program is hopelessly out of date or you don't have one, you can go to McAfee.Com and download their "Stinger" tool which will take care of 53 of the most common viruses including the Sober p@mm.
Here's what the message looks like. I got this one while I was typing this report, although this is just one of many versions some with considerably more text, but all with a link to a German website..
Lese selbst:
http://bz.berlin1.de/archiv/041115_pdf/.htm
