E-mail Virus Alert Detection

[Pace Cap'n]

Ran across this on the web. Can't verify that it works, but it seems to make sense.


A slick trick against e-mail viruses

As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your email address book and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates.

This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread it further, and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what to do:

First: Open your address book and click on "new contact" or "new person" just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses.

Second: In the window where you would type your friends FIRST name, type in !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros). In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type in WormAlert.

Third: Then complete everything by clicking add, enter, OK, etc.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: the "name" !000 will be placed sat the top of your email address book as entry #1. This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. But when it tries to send itself to !000, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered (WormAlert). if the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phoney address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be affected.

Here's the second great advantage of this method. If an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your Inbox almost immediately.

Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to WormAlert could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it.

If everbody you know does this, then you needn't ever worry about opening mail from friends. Pass this on to your friends.

[boxcar]

Thanks for the tip, PC. Did you discover this trick yourself?

Boxcar

[Pace Cap'n]

No, not that clever.

Got it on a rather interesting web site:

http://www.ehow.com/

Tips for doing darn near anything.

The page I was reading when I saw the e-mail thing was:

http://www.ehow.com/list_1014.html

[BillW]

This would only work if the worm was written to succumb to this trick. I would imagine the person that came up with this "tip" modeled it after the behavior of a specific attack that he/she studied.

To me, it seems rather odd that worm code would even go to the trouble to check for valid addresses in the address book as opposed to simply mail infected e-mail to all addresses.

Using this tip won't hurt anything but it will probably only "protect" against one worm and its derivatives so don't get too comfortable.

Bill

[JustRalph]

I have had this in my address book for almost 5 years now. I know of one person it worked for. But what the hell can it hurt?

[Equineer]

Does this make sense?

For some users, this trick might alert them to mischief since their ISP postmaster should send them a notice that the bogus email to "!000" could not be delivered.

For the same effect, it might also be worthwhile building a bogus but syntactically correct email address book entry in case a worm is too clever to fall for "!000" or a similar invalid email address.

[Tom]

Originally posted by JustRalph
I have had this in my address book for almost 5 years now. I know of one person it worked for. But what the hell can it hurt?

.....unless it acts as a......beacon????;)

[sealman]

Hey isn't there some way of reflecting the worm back to the sender. Not just that, even, but enhancing it, so to speak, so that it can damage the originator's computer?

[BillW]

Originally posted by sealman
Hey isn't there some way of reflecting the worm back to the sender. Not just that, even, but enhancing it, so to speak, so that it can damage the originator's computer?

The originator is not the delivery agent. Infected computers retransmit viruses from their own address book, so you would be attacking a victim. This type of vigilantism is not productive anyway, it just causes more problems.

[sealman]

This is what happens when you shoot from the hip. And here I thought I was on the side of law and order!

[BillW]

Originally posted by sealman
This is what happens when you shoot from the hip. And here I thought I was on the side of law and order!

It's never easy, that's why these virus writers still exist. :rolleyes:

Making the operating systems invulnerable to these attacks is the only real answer. Why being able to mail self-executing code was seen as a feature is beyond me. But then again I guess that's why I'm not in marketing.

Bill

[JustRalph]

Originally posted by sealman
Hey isn't there some way of reflecting the worm back to the sender. Not just that, even, but enhancing it, so to speak, so that it can damage the originator's computer?

sure there is.........but in most states it is known as a felony.......

[Lefty]

Couldn't do it. Said there was no valid domain name.

[Pace Cap'n]

Am starting to think I posted in haste.

Tried sending an e-mail to that address and never heard anything from the e-mail program. (maybe it went to Just Ralph)

And another thing... who has an address book so up to date that it doesn't already contain some bogus addresses?

Oh, well...