E~Mail funnystuff Part three

[ToolManTimTaylor]

Now The TDR is sending me funnystuff with Hidden attachments via third party



Remember Part 1 and part Deux?



Now the same thing all over again only when I crept arround it and saw the return path I saw this cid:Hc73KQQ4X1s581

And another attachment was sent with a heading : Language

Another with : Tabs and cellpadding Both in the header of the mail.



My mailbox starts norton into fits and starts! My pc is clean as a whistle tho.

 

[ToolManTimTaylor]

Now this one cid:X564122V8B658wz8Y4j GRRRRRrrrrrr

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

I too have been getting flooded with E-mail stuff from various automated Email "postmasters" and administrators, advising me that some message I have supposedly sent was not deliverable due to not being currently active or valid addresses, or else that *I* have a virus in my system and the message was intercepted... These are messages to people and places I've never heard of, mostly foreign, and I'm running *2* different, up to date virus and firewall programs on my system - both of which say my system is clean...



I wonder if it's all part of the massive hacker Internet crash attempt from a couple of weeks ago?



Anyway, I've had literally HUNDREDS of these Email notices sent to me - to the point I simply filter and automatically delete them as they arrive...

 

[ToolManTimTaylor]

Yeah Gary but All the above have come from THE TDR!

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

I wonder if they actually originate from within TDR equipment, or are somehow included, attached or appended by the outfit hosting the TDR servers?



God knows, they seem to manage to screw up enough of the other operations they are responsible for, I. E. , the recent severe system slowdowns and such...

 

[ToolManTimTaylor]

Well the thing that caught my eye anyways was the address of both the mail itself and the attachment were the SAME!



For instance the first mail I got had "cid:Hc73KQQ4X1s581 " in the address bar ... . No http: , No Https: , FTP: ... . nothing.



Possibility?



IP Spoof

A technique used to gain unauthorized access to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a computer with an IP address indicating that the message is coming from a trusted host. To engage in IP spoofing, a hacker must first use a variety of techniques to find an IP address of a trusted host and then modify the packet headers so that it appears that the packets are coming from that host.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

If you look at the source of the messages I'm 99. 999% sure that you'll find it isn't coming from the TDR. There are some very sneaky viruses out there now. Here's an example of how they work, let's say your computer is infected. It looks through your email and finds addresses that you've sent messages to and ones that you've received from. It then sends then from your computer as that person. The reason for this so they can't be researched back to where the virus came from and therefore are more likely to spread. If you view the message source look at where the message was received from (in outlook express you go to file->properties->details). If it's coming from the TDR server it will say www.turbodieselregister.com as where it's received from. If it's from rpatton@ix.netcom.com it will come from either a *.netcom.com address or bellsouth.net (the ISP they use). If it's other than those addresses then it came from someone else and is masquerading as the TDR. This is VERY common because the TDR is in so many peoples email. I get approximately 20-30 virus emails a week that are supposedly from the TDR (if you look in the from address) but when I look at the message source it's often coming through AOL or otherwise. The web server and all of the TDR's PC's have current virus software on them that is updated on a weekly basis.



-Steve

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

"The web server and all of the TDR's PC's have current virus software on them that is updated on a weekly basis. "



And THAT is a subject that REALLY puzzles and annoys me!

WHT is it that ump-teen million INDIVIDUAL Interner users must buy separate virus protection software programs to do what a relative HANDFUL of backbone servers and ISP's SHOULD or COULD be doing, leaving the customer completely out of it?



Why did *I* just have to buy a $50 program, to duplicate what my ISP was supposedly already doing?



There's something WRONG with this picture...

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

That's easy Gary - there's actually very good reasons for it. First one is that viruses were around before the majority of people were on the internet and were spread primarily through passing files on floppies. Also, viruses are sometimes spread and are dormant for a period of time before they become active (on a specific date for example). In almost all cases, viruses are not discovered until someone is affected by it. So a virus could be spread via email when virus protection providers are not aware of it and then it's on your machine. On the date it's supposed to become active - boom your PC is dead even if your provider is scanning for it for the week before it becomes active. So even if your ISP had virus protection on their file servers you would still need it on your local PC as well for the other potential exposures to viruses other than through email.



Another couple of reasons are economic. There are relatively few providers out there compared to the number of individual users. The costs to develop anti-virus solutions and maintain the databases to try and battle the hackers out there are very high. There are two major companies that a vast majority of their business is built upon virus protection (Symantec which used to be Norton and Network Associates which used to be Mcafee). If all of their costs were born by the relatively few providers your hosting fees would have to increase significantly to offset them.



The last one is potential liability. If your host providers were basically saying that you didn't need virus protection and you got infected with a new virus that they weren't aware of yet (which happens) and your computer was wiped out there would be cases of them being sued for negligence. By putting it on you to take care of that protection they remove themselves from that potential. In the case of a personal PC that is fairly minor, but in the case of a business it could run into the millions and potentially billions of dollars.



I've been dealing with viruses and virus protection since the late 1980's when they started becoming prevalent. Believe me when I tell you that the minor cost and current convenience of updating is WELL worth the protection that you get.



-Steve