> individual's email address on their computer. The virus picks up a random
> address on the infected machine and uses it to send out its message so that
> it looks like your trusted friend was the person who sent it to you. This
> is
> the hacker's way of covering the viruses trail and it is very effective
> since
> it is most difficult to determine who actually has the virused machine when
> there is a high degree of spoofing going on.
Tip: Unless your friend specifically mentions an attachment somewhere in the
body of the email, assume it is a virus. (We learned this lesson with the
"happy99" virus of several years ago.) And even if the text does mention an
attachment, be alert for something "not right," for example, we once got a
message, supposedly from a friend, with a message claiming the attachment was
a game the friend had created -- the problem was, the message was in very bad
English, whereas the friend was a native speaker. It never hurts to ask your
friend to verify whether the attachment was authorized, as I attempted to do
with the two from Aroid-L members. (When all I got in reply was
Mailer-Daemon, that told me to play it safe and trash them.)
Jason Hernandez
Naturalist-at-Large
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