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What is a virus?
A virus is a piece of programming code that is designed to infect a
computer, and in most cases, will spread to other computers. Some harm data
on your computer. Other viruses use your computer to harm others, and some
just cause general annoyance. Viruses can be transmitted via attachments in
email, file downloads, local area networks, or other forms of computer
media.
What are the most common types of viruses?
The most common viruses do one of two things. One type, such as the Klez
virus, infects common email programs, and emails copies of itself to
everybody in the address book, or any email addresses that it finds in the
inbox or sent items. Another common virus type infects the operating system,
and broadcasts information to various sites all over the Internet. Viruses
like this can significantly slow down local networks, individual
connections, or even large ISP systems.
What is virus protection, and where can I get
it?
Virus protection is software that will
eliminate a virus (or malicious program) from your computer, and protect you
from further infection. Anti-virus software must be updated frequently, or
it won’t protect against newer viruses. Many company offer commercial and
free virus protection software. Please refer to some of the following sites
for more information:
What is spam?
Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies
of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would
not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising,
often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services.
Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for
by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
There are two main types of spam, and they have
different effects on Internet users. Cancelable Usenet spam is a single
message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience,
Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is
often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at
"lurkers", people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give
their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups
by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant
posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system
administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.
Email spam targets individual users with direct
mail messages. Email spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet
postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for
addresses. Email spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive.
Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their
mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional
money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to
transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.
One particularly nasty variant of email spam is
sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.)
Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers
will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible,
so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a
direct target for their attacks.
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Why is spam bad?
Why do we
get so upset when we receive E-mail which was not requested?
There are several reasons:
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The free ride.
E-mail spam is unique in that the
receiver pays so much more for it than the sender does. For example,
AOL has said that they were receiving 1.8 million spams from Cyber
Promotions per day until they got a court injunction to stop it. Assuming
that it takes the typical AOL user only 10 seconds to identify and discard
a message, that's still 5,000 hours per day of connect time per day spent
discarding their spam, just on AOL. By contrast, the spammer probably has
a T1 line that costs him about $100/day. No other kind of advertising
costs the advertiser so little, and the recipient so much. The closest
analogy I can think of would be auto-dialing junk phone calls to cellular
users (in the US, cell phone users pay to receive as well as originate
calls); you can imagine how favorably that might be received.
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The ``oceans of spam''
problem. Many spam messages say ``please send a REMOVE message to get
off our list.'' Even disregarding the question of why you should have to
do anything to get off a list you never asked to join, this becomes
completely impossible if the volume grows. At the moment, most of us only
get a few spams per day. But imagine if only 1/10 of 1 % of the users on
the Internet decided to send out spam at a moderate rate of 100,000 per
day, a rate easily achievable with a dial-up account and a PC. Then
everyone would be receiving 100 spams every day. If 1% of users were
spamming at that rate, we'd all be getting 1,000 spams per day. Is it
reasonable to ask people to send out 100 ``remove'' messages per day?
Hardly. If spam grows, it will crowd our mailboxes to the point that
they're not useful for real mail. Users on AOL, which has a lot of trouble
with internal spammers, report that they're already nearing this point.
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The theft of resources.
An increasing number of spammers, such as Quantum Communications, send
most or all of their mail via innocent intermediate systems, to avoid
blocks that many systems have placed against mail coming directly from the
spammers' systems. (Due to a historical quirk, most mail systems on the
Internet will deliver mail to anyone, not just their own users.) This
fills the intermediate systems' networks and disks with unwanted spam
messages, takes up their managers' time dealing with all the undeliverable
spam messages, and subjects them to complaints from recipients who
conclude that since the intermediate system delivered the mail, they must
be in league with the spammers.
Many
other spammers use ``hit and run'' spamming in which they get a trial
dial-up account at an Internet provider for a few days, send tens of
thousands of messages, then abandon the account (unless the provider notices
what they're doing and cancels it first), leaving the unsuspecting provider
to clean up the mess. Many spammers have done this tens or dozens of times,
forcing the providers to waste staff time both on the cleanup and on
monitoring their trial accounts for abuse.
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It's all garbage.
The spam messages I've seen have almost without exception advertised stuff
that's worthless, deceptive, and partly or entirely fraudulent. (I include
the many MLMs in here, even though the MLM-ers rarely understand why
there's no such thing as a good MLM.) It's spam software, funky miracle
cures, off-brand computer parts, vaguely described get rich quick schemes,
dial-a-porn, and so on downhill from there. It's all stuff that's too
cruddy to be worth advertising in any medium where they'd actually have to
pay the cost of the ads. Also, since the cost of spamming is so low,
there's no point in targeting your ads, when for the same low price you
can send the ads to everyone, increasing the noise level the rest of us
have to deal with.
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They're crooks. Spam
software invariably comes with a list of names falsely claimed to be of
people who've said they want to receive ads, but actually consisting of
unwilling victims culled at random from usenet or mailing lists. Spam
software often promises to run on a provider's system in a way designed to
be hard for the provider to detect so they can't tell what the spammer is
doing. Spams invariably say they'll remove names on request, but they
almost never do. Indeed, people report that when they send a test
``remove'' request from a newly created account, they usually start to
receive spam at that address.
Spammers know that people don't want to hear from them, and generally put
fake return addresses on their messages so that they don't have to bear the
cost of receiving responses from people to whom they've send messages.
Whenever possible, they use the ``disposable'' trial ISP accounts mentioned
above so the ISP bears the cost of cleaning up after them. I could go on,
but you get the idea. It's hard to think of another line of business where
the general ethical level is so low.
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It might be illegal.
Some kinds of spam are illegal in some countries on the Internet.
Especially with pornography, mere possession of such material can be
enough to put the recipient in jail. In the United States, child
pornography is highly illegal and we've already seen spammed child porn
offers.
Any one of
these six would be enough to make me pretty unhappy about getting junk
e-mail. Put them together and it's intolerable.
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Windows XP Users: Infected by Sasser virus?
If you are using Microsoft®
Windows® XP or Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and your computer has been
infected by the Sasser worm, you can take these steps to update your
software, remove the worm, and help protect against future infections.
Step 1: Disconnect from the
Internet
To avoid further problems,
disconnect from the Internet:
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Broadband connection
users:
Locate the cable that runs from your external DSL or cable modem and
unplug that cable either from the modem or from the telephone jack.
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Dial-up connection users:
Locate the cable that runs from the modem inside your computer to your
telephone jack and unplug that cable either from the telephone jack or
from your computer.
Step 2: Stop the Shutdown
Cycle
This worm may cause
LSASS.EXE to stop responding, which forces the operating system to shut down
after 60 seconds. If your computer starts to shut down, follow these steps
to abort any system shutdown that may be in progress.
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On the taskbar at the
bottom of your screen, click Start, and then click Run.
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Type: cmd and then
click OK.
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At the command prompt,
type: shutdown.exe -a and then press ENTER.
Step 3: Mitigate the
Vulnerability
You can temporarily remove
the vulnerability that allows the worm to infect your computer by creating a
log file.
Create the log file
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On the taskbar at the
bottom of your screen, click Start, and then click Run.
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Type: cmd and then
click OK.
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At the command prompt,
type: echo dcpromo >%systemroot%\debug\dcpromo.log and then press
ENTER.
Make the log file read-only
4.
At the
command prompt, type: attrib +R %systemroot%\debug\dcpromo.log and
then press ENTER.
Step 4: Improve System
Performance
If your computer is acting
sluggish or if the Internet connection is slow, the worm may be flooding
your local network connection. This may make it impossible for you to
download and install the required software update. To improve system
performance:
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Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE,
and then click Task Manager.
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For each of the following
tasks that may be listed, click the task to select it, and then click the
End Task button to end it.
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Any task ending with
_up.exe (for example, 12345_up.exe).
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Any task starting with
avserve (for example, avserve.exe).
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Any task starting with
avserve2 (for example, avserve2.exe).
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Any task starting with
skynetave (for example, skynetave.exe).
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hkey.exe
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msiwin84.exe
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wmiprvsw.exe
Note Do
not end the wmiprvse.exe task; it is a legitimate system task.
Step 5: Enable a Firewall
A firewall is a piece of
software or hardware that creates a protective barrier between your computer
and the Internet. If your computer has been infected, a firewall will help
limit the effects of the worm. Windows XP includes the Internet Connection
Firewall (ICF). To turn on ICF:
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On the taskbar at the
bottom of your screen, click Start, and then click Control Panel.
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Click the Network and
Internet Connections category.
(If the Network and Internet Connections is not visible, click
Switch to Category View under Control Panel on the left side of
the Control Panel window.)
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Click Network
Connections.
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Right-click the
Dial-up, LAN, or High-Speed Internet connection that you use to
connect to the Internet, and then click Properties from the
shortcut menu.
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On the Advanced
tab, under Internet Connection Firewall, select Protect my
computer and network, and then click OK. The Windows XP
firewall is now enabled.
Step 6: Reconnect to the
Internet
Plug the cable (referred to
in Step 1) back into your computer, telephone jack, or modem.
Step 7: Install the
Required Update
To help protect your
computer against this worm in the future, you must download and install
security update 835732, which was released with Microsoft Security
Bulletin MS04-011. To download security update 835732, go to
http://go.microsoft.com/?LinkID=526067
Step 8: Check For and
Remove Sasser
After you have installed the
update and restarted your computer, go to the Web page "What You Should Know
About the Sasser Worm and Its Variants" at
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.asp. Use the Sasser
Worm Removal Tool to search your hard disk for and remove Sasser.A, Sasser.B,
Sasser.C, and Sasser.D.
About Internet Connection
Firewall
The Windows XP Internet
Connection Firewall can block useful tasks such as sharing files or printers
through a network, transferring files in applications, or hosting
multiplayer games. Nonetheless, Microsoft recommends that you use a firewall
to help protect your computer.
If you turn on the Internet
Connection Firewall and find that you can't perform some tasks you want to,
read "How to Open Ports in the Windows XP Internet Connection Firewall" at
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/ports.asp.
If you have more than one
computer, want more technical information, or want to learn more about
firewalls, read "Frequently Asked Questions About Firewalls" at
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/firewall.asp.
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General Password Tips
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Did you know your
password is case sensitive? Make sure your Caps Lock button is OFF!
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Log in problems are
frequently typos - type slowly!
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If you're using the
keys on the right side of your keyboard,
make sure the Number Lock button is ON!
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If you recently
changed your password, it can take up to 20 minutes for it to reset in our
system.
Password Security Tips
Using an insecure password can result in your account being compromised.
Follow these guidelines to select and maintain a secure password:
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Don't use passwords
that consist of easily accessible personal information, such as address,
phone number, or date of birth.
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Make your passwords
at least six characters and a combination of numbers and letters. They
should also include both capital and lowercase letters.
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Avoid using words
that can be found in a dictionary.
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Don't use the same
passwords for multiple sites. Reusing passwords, although, tempting, is a
security risk. We have found that when a hacker gets a hold of a password,
they will try to use it on hundreds of other sites to try to access your
personal information.
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Don't give your
password out to anyone.
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Change your
passwords frequently
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