Talbert Pipes- Some info on today's virus emails
Trever Talbert
trever at talbertpipes.com
Fri Oct 29 20:23:10 EDT 2004
Hello! Rather than reply to all the individual emails I've gotten on the
two virus emails that went out today, I'll simply try to fill everyone on
the mailing list in on what happened. The short answer at the moment is
that I don't know yet. Earlier today, two emails infected with the W32
Beagle virus were sent to everyone on the Talbert Pipes mailing list. The
list is not kept on my computer or managed here, but rather at Pair
Networks, our website host provider. As soon as I noticed the virus emails
(I get copies of all notices I send out, just as a precaution), I ran a full
virus scan on this PC (I use Norton and double-checked with Trend Micro's
online scan as well, plus always run firewalled, plus Spybot also just in
case!) and found nothing. I've also run Symantec's specialized
scan-and-remove tool for this specific worm, again with no results. At this
point, my best guess is that someone managed to hack into the mailing list
on the Pair server and "hijacked" it that way, rather than the email
originating from here... or, possibly they managed to spoof my originating
email so that the automated server list believed the emails had come from
me, and passed them on accordingly. I changed the mailing list passwords
and have emailed Pair to ask about any security problems they may have had,
but I don't expect to hear back immediately. There is no vital or personal
data of any kind kept on this server, so there is no risk of anyone's
personal information being compromised (I don't keep bank card details on
record at all unless specially requested to, and then they are kept only on
paper record that's well-hidden). I NEVER send attachments by the email
list, so any list email with an attachment should be deleted. I hope this
hasn't caused anyone any distress. This is a fairly old worm now and most
ISPs and anti-virus clients guard against it. Anyone experiencing problems
can easily remove any infected file by using Symantec's free utility, posted
here:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.beagle.a@mm.html?Open
I'm very sorry this has been a problem, and obviously given the press to
finish the last Halloween pipes, it couldn't have happened at a worse time.
Regarding the Halloween pipes, we are working round the clock and will post
ASAP, and email a notice when they go up.
Happy smoking,
Trever Talbert
http://www.talbertpipes.com
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