Virus Alert - *.scr attachment

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paulb

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Joined 2001
#1
I'm sorry to say that I may have emailed out a virus. It came in through my wife's account, my wife opened the attachment, and it emailed itself via my account. It has wiped out my address book so I can't notify anyone. It has also disabled Norton Antivirus (yes, my definitions were up to date).

Watch out for an attachment of the form *.scr. If you delete the email without opening the attachment, no harm is done.

According to the Norton.com website, the virus is W32.Yaha.K@mm. There's a big long process to reverse it, but I think my address book is lost for good.

Anybody who has emailed me and received a reply would probably have been in my address book. Watch out for *.scr attachments, this virus was only discovered two days ago.
 
#2
*.SCR

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune...

For info:

A file with the *.scr extension is an executable much the same as any *.exe file.

This implies it can run code on any computer,it's own or depending on available libraries (*.dll) pretty much anything it fancies.

Having had similar mishaps with NAV in the past I switched to another AV prog,never had a virus infection since.


Cheers,😉
 
#4
Sympathies, Paul...been there, done that, didn't enjoy the process.
I'm vulnerable because I can't run a virus program on this PC. It's only 100MHz. The requirements for virus programs all state that they want 166MHz (or something along those lines) as a minimum. They mean it. I tried to put McAffee on here and the machine just about stopped entirely. So I ride bareback and cross my fingers. Last year was the first time I've ever had a problem.
People look at me funny when I say I'm using such a Stone Age piece of hardware. I have three reasons. Money. The fact that even a 10MHz machine spends most of its time twiddling its thumbs waiting for me to make another keystroke when I'm writing a story. And, finally, we're used to each other.
Still, I'm aware that the stuff is out there. Was forcibly reminded of it almost exactly a year ago.
Good luck.

Grey

P.S.: I repeat--the only way to cut down on these &%#@! computer virus problems is to make it a hanging offense.
 
#6
If the situation were reversed--Mac more popular than the IBM standard--the viruses would be written for the Mac platform and PC users would be on easy street.
The Macs I've dabbled with over the years have never impressed me, but that's not a condemnation. I've been on so many hardware/software combinations over the years that I don't take sides any more--I just learn the quirks of whatever is in front of me and set about getting the job done.

Grey
 
#7
I managed to get everything back okay. The files that I thought were deleted were just hidden. Windows XP has a system checkpoint / restore feature that let me set the registry back to just before I got the virus.
Hey, that sounds like a time travel story, Grey...

Thanks to Norton / Symantec for their detailed instructions, which helped me figure this thing out.
 
#8
The idea of having a checkpoint in your life that you can go back to in the event of death is an old one. (The idea being that you're reborn into a cloned body...)
Didn't stop me from using it in one of my stories, though.

Grey
 
#10
Last I looked there was more security breaches with Linux/GNU based operating systems then with Windows 2000 per capita, not to mention there has been a few virii and worms that effect Linux/GNU(even a few cross-platform ones).
 
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