WARNING!!!

righthandseat · Post by **righthandseat** » 13 Nov 2006, 15:18

VERY IMPORTANT WARNING
Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning direct from both Microsoft and Norton.
Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.
You may receive an apparently harmless email with a P ower Point presentation "Life is beautiful."
If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and delete it immediately. If you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying: "It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful." Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.
This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus software's are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself "life owner."

DanKH · Post by **DanKH** » 13 Nov 2006, 15:21

And then again:

http://www.symantec.com/security_respon ... 11-0444-99

DanKH · Post by **DanKH** » 13 Nov 2006, 15:24

Do always pay a visit to this site, when you receive these kind of warnings...:

http://www.breakthechain.org/

righthandseat · Post by **righthandseat** » 13 Nov 2006, 15:29

So - who the hell do you have to believe of the anti-virus merchants??

DanKH · Post by **DanKH** » 13 Nov 2006, 15:35

The best way it to keep calm and don't overreact...

And a quick Google search reveals that more or less all the anti-virus merchants reports this as a hoax....

Read the description on the above mentioned site, on how it is relative easy to spot a hoax....

Quixoticish · Post by **Quixoticish** » 13 Nov 2006, 15:49

I've not seen a chain mail like that since I used to use AOL many years ago. The wording hasn't changed at all.

ianhind · Post by **ianhind** » 13 Nov 2006, 17:07

Well if I received a Power Point presentation called "Life is beautiful", it would be promptly despatched to the bit bucket - no thought needed.

TobyV · Post by **TobyV** » 13 Nov 2006, 17:21

righthandseat wrote:So - who the hell do you have to believe of the anti-virus merchants??

Two things to look for:

Over hyped sounding language

Attachments (such as ppts docs etc) that allegedly cause catastrophic consequences. Ask yourself, when you run it, it will open by default in the application assigned to it, and only really has the capabilities of that application. Generally speaking, word, powerpoint etc cannot wipe your hardrive or any of the like. The main ones to watch out for are attached programs (.exe, .com, .pif, .bat) ZIPs, links to places on the net, especially those very bogus sounding names or DNS addresses only (address consists only of numbers). These WILL likely cause harm even if the email says otherwise!!

As has been said, if ever you read a warning that you think might not be a hoax, just google part of the text as odds are you arent the first person to receive it and wonder what it is and whether its genuine

Tweek · Post by **Tweek** » 13 Nov 2006, 17:50

Try a junk mail filter. It'll stop the real viruses, and the fake warnings.

DanKH · Post by **DanKH** » 13 Nov 2006, 20:43

TobyV wrote: Generally speaking, word, PowerPoint etc cannot wipe your hardrive or any of the like.

Toby, I could very easy nock up a word document or the like, that had the ability to wipe your HDD....

As VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is a part of more or less every M$ application, one could easily implement auto-code embedded in a macro that could carry out nasty things....so you can't make a rule of thumb that rules out files of that type.....

As always; use your good sense and judgement. It's better to permanently delete one mail to much than not....