AUGI Site Hammered.

[beegee]

Reprint:
From David Kingsley @ AUGI:



It seems our ISP has gotten hit by the WittyWorm, a viscious virus which
destroys the victim.

>From eweek.com:

The Witty worm, which took hold of the Internet for a short time during the
weekend, appears to have peaked thanks to its habit of destroying the
machines it infects.

Witty made a dramatic entrance Saturday morning, quickly infecting more than
6,000 computers, which then began scanning the Internet for other machines
to attack. But within 24 hours, the number of Witty-infected PCs scanning
the Internet had dropped to around 2,000. That number dropped even further,
to around 1,000 machines by Monday morning, according to data compiled by
The SANS Institute, based in Bethesda, Md.

...An analysis by Lurhq Corp. said that any infected system will have its OS
ruined, along with most of the files on the physical drives, depending on
how long the worm is on the machine.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1552000,00.asp?kc=EWNWS032204DTX1K00005
99

[PeterJ]

I wondered where it had gone.

[beegee]

Hope Chris's ISP has a better firewall than AUGI's did.... :shock:

[PeterJ]

Did you get that by email? I haven't seen it and was wondering when we might expect to get AUGI back up and running.

I have received something over 1000 junk mails in the last fortnight, mostly it seems coming from infected machines, so if it was emailed to mods it may have got lost in the deluge.

[beegee]

Yes, it was emailed.

I've also experienced a huge hit in spam mails over the last week, including virus mail.

PS: AUGI is still down, so I'm thinking the damage was major there.

[PeterJ]

Anytime I have to give away my email address these days I always give it non-qualified places as peter_junk@..... makes filtering easier, but even allowing for that I just seem to be really suffering right now.

[Scott D Davis]

speaking of viruses, they are getting creative. Heres the text of an email i received from "support@symantec.com" (obviously spoofed)


The sample file you sent contains a new virus version of buppa.k. Please update your virus scanner with the attached dat file.

Best Regards,
Keria Reynolds

+++ Attachment: No Virus found
+++ Kaspersky AntiVirus - www.kaspersky.com

The email had a attachment "datfiles.zip" that was actually a virus. My first thought was,"If this is from Symantec, why was it scanned with Kaspersky AntiVirus?"

Be careful what you open!

[rhys]

Peter - re spam
I can recommend using Outlook 2003 with its built in spam filters. It seems to catch most .Before Outlook added this feature I used In- boxer. Still run this from within Outlook 2003 and they between catch pretty much everything with no lost mail yet. They both filters into Junk and Review folders.

[PeterJ]

Actually I was thinking of upgrading to Office 2003 anyway, but I am aggrieved by the use of downloaded help files in Project 2003 which seems an unnecessary detail. Is this the same in the rest of the 2003 family?

[cogen]

You guys might consider a spam filter that allows you to preview mail at your server before you download to your machine. I use an app called Mailwasher, but I understand that there are other similar products. I'm able to delete virus-laden mail and junk at the server, so this **** never hits my machines.

[beegee]

Mail Washer is a good program, but not automatic.
Lately I've been using Spam Sleuth from Blue Squirrel, which has bayesian filters, among a host of others, as well as custom settings. It catches just about everything sus automatically - great when you don't have the time to review the incoming list.

[PeterJ]

My desktop has been showing some odd behaviour with the system date changing to 2165 so that all my mail, calendaring and so on have been auto archived. I thought I had lost everything first time it happened. There doesn't appear to be a virus on thesystem but I don't know what else would cause this.

Anyway in the name of safety I upgraded to Norton/Symantec Internet Security Pro 2004. Works well, protects against trojan horse etc (my desktop machine is ironically the least secure on the network because the router forwards everything to it!) plus it seems to have a very secure spam filter. Very pleasing. Cost $70US as a download. More expensive than some options but I have been running various versions of Norton for some years now and have been happy with the updates so...

[cogen]

begee,

Spam Sleuth looks very interesting, but it looks like one of those spam filters that takes some time initially to "learn" what to allow through...did you find that to be the case? Did mail that you wanted get unintentionally blacklisted?

[beegee]

begee,

Spam Sleuth looks very interesting, but it looks like one of those spam filters that takes some time initially to "learn" what to allow through...did you find that to be the case? Did mail that you wanted get unintentionally blacklisted?

Yes and yes.

But the mail is placed in a "mail jail" and is easy to restore to the mail server.

The bayesian filters need approx 100 good and 100 spam mails to learn. In the meantime, there are a heap of user configered settings and system settings that cope really well with filtering spam.

It has a 60 free trial period.

[GuyR]

One of the easiest ways to not be infected by virus's is don't use Outlook/Outlook express. I use Mozilla Thunderbird because it's got reasonable junk filters and it can't be targeted like the MS products.

Guy

[rhys]

Peter
Office 2003 uses both local, as before, and online help. I don't know about Project. The only reason for not upgrading is Microsoft painful licencing, just like Revit, authorized to 2 machines but unlike Revit you can run on desktop and portable without any trasfering of licence, i.e you have 2 licences in effect.
On spam filters I used to use mailwasher, a freebee, the bouht Inboxer which works with all versions of Outlook from within Outlook, unlike Mailwasher which previews mail and which takes time.
Outlook 2003 has a similar spam filter to Inboxer built in. Both take your addressbook and known "good" mail as the starting point. You can review mail recieved and add to either the good or bad lists. In my expeience it all worked out of the box with very little "learning", by me or the program!
The both seem to have lists of key words likley to be used in spam so recieving an e mail from you chemist about a prescription might just possibly be caught if the e mail address was cathy@aol.pl but not if it was an address already in your contacts list. In practice it has never blocked a good e mail.

[beegee]

Anyone find they can log on to AUGI yet ?

I can't.

[PeterJ]

I can get to a welcome screen, Beegee, but no more than that.

The database side is still down. So much for takes a knockin' keeps on rockin'

[hand471037]

A 2nd on Mozilla. Built in junk mail filter, virus resistant, open source, and very usable. Nothing but good!

And as for Zoog, I beleve that this site is running on a linux server, so the issue is moot. ;)

[PeterJ]

And as for Zoog, I beleve that this site is running on a linux server, so the issue is moot. ;)

You are absolutely right, Jeffrey.

[beegee]

very witty.
http://www.zoogdesign.com/forums/phpBB2/download.php?id=1960

[cogen]

Is it true that AUGI used Black Ice? Steve Gibson at http://www.grc.com has documented Black Ice problems for years.