Fighting malware and spam

Life is Beautiful

The following is the text usually shown in the Life is Beautiful hoax email. There may be other variations on a similar theme, as well as other language versions.

Hoax text

Subject: FW: URGENT WARNING

 VERY IMPORTANT WARNING

Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such as
Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on This information arrived this morning direct
from both Microsoft and Norton.

Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.

You m ay receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point
presentation "Life is beautiful"

If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and delete
it immediately. If you open this file, a message will appear on your
screen saying: "It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful."
Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person who sent
it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.

This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL
has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software's are not
capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls
himself "life owner ."

PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS and ask them to PASS
IT ON IMMEDIATELY.

	

VB reminds users: if you receive a virus warning message, do not forward the message to all your friends/colleagues, as it may suggest in the text. If you have verified that the message is a hoax, simply delete it. If you are unsure, forward the message to your IT administrator. Failing that, forward it to hoax@virusbtn.com. It is possible that you may receive a hoax email with a file attachment. Since it is possible that these attachments could be infected VB advises such files to be be treated with the same caution as any other unexpected message attachment and urges users not to open them.

Poll

Malware Prevalence

Agent
Mytob
Invoice
NetSky
Suspect packers