unforum

[NashCarey]

Stop Your Criminal Actions

[Wolf]

It sounds more like you're getting slammed with a W32.Netsky variant than with an actual intentional attack. Check out Symantec's site for the latest—the file sizes range from 19 to 42k, and the latest variants are approximately 19 and 25k.

http://www.symantec.com/index.htm

If it is Netsky, checking the from line or the IP won't help, since netsky spoofs them. And if it's Netsky there's very little you can do aside from changing addresses…but the new addresses would start getting them soon enough.

I'm an admin on a very busy site, and we get tons of these every day…because somebody that had our address stored got infected.

(edited to add: Just in the time it took me to write that reply, I got six new viruses in the inbox.)

[Stormalong]

Wolf is correct. All this means is that one or more of your players has one or more viruses.

Note to non-technical people: The email these viruses (worms, actually, but i won't nitpick) send use spoofed addresses. That is, the From address on the mail is not the address of the person who is infected and sent the mail. So you can't use the From address to determine who is infected. In fact, there is really no way at all to determine where it came from. You just have to hope the infected person eventually figures it out and cleans their system.

Everyone, please virus scan your systems ASAP. You can be infected and not know it.

On the other hand, any webhost that would drop you simply because your addresses are recieving viruses is pretty clueless. You should list who they are so that others will know which companies to avoid. Anyone in the biz with a clue will know that the addresses are spoofed, and that the mail didn't come from you. Its pretty much like spam these days, if you have an email you just have to expect you'll get some in your inbox.

[Flynn]

I don't know how helpful it will be to others, but Mailwasher appears to have helped me avoid the worst of this particular worm. I went through a week of bouncing emails labelled as "Probable virus" (and after checking some, they were indeed Netsky) and I've had none since. So, FWIW, get Mailwasher from here. It may or may not solve the problems described above, but it's a good spam killer regardless!

[SpaceBass]

I get a ton of virus-laden spams daily as well, to all my email addresses that have ever been publicly available. The latest worm/virus variants don't just harvest email addresses from an infected machine's email address book anymore. Now they'll scan for many different filetypes all over the machine's harddrive, including internet file caches, and scrape all these different files for email addresses. This means that an infected user can unintentionally give up your email addy to the worm just by virtue of having browsed your website before getting infected, even if the user has never emailed you or played your game.

Yes, it sucks.

[Varin]

[BrianEnigma]

[AnthraX101]

I have offered my help Nash. I'm sorry I wouldn't give you my personal phone number, but I did say we could set up a mutual IRC/AIM meeting. I don't think anyone is being malicious and monitoring your AIM conversations, these worms are just the state of the internet today. The more popular your site is, the more email you will get. You need to set up some decent email software with virus scanning capabilities. If your hosting service is threatining to kick you off of your servers, get a halfway decent host.

AnthraX101

[BrianEnigma]

[Varin]

And if for some reason you don't have virus protection *gasp* you can use some of the online virus scanners to see how many viruses you've accumulated, something like this...

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

BTW, I wouldn't rely on this for virus protection, it only scans to see what you already have.

[vpisteve]

In the meantime, AVG AntiVirus is free. I've heard that it catches more viruses that McAfee and Norton combined, though that may just be hearsay.

[Varin]

[bagsbee]

[jamesi]

Along with every computer at my school, my own personal computer at home has been protected by AVG for over a year now, without fail. It is a great program, one that I will buy if ever I have some discretionary* income.

*Note: Money spent on gambling or activities involving the removal of clothing are not factored in with discretionary income, but rather, in the 'basic human needs' category.

[vpisteve]