Fuddland

Probably thanks to some heavy virus protection on the university system, I’ve not received any emails sent by the W32/MyDoom-A worm that’s annoying everybody else at the moment. However, I have received several “undeliverable” error messages, along the lines of:

Your message with subject “asaHKWhnjYYhgsj” was rejected because it contains an attachment infected with WORM_MYDOOM.A. This message is from a robot, so don’t bother replying. Contact your local systems administrator instead.

[In fact the messages are all in French, but I think that’s the general gist of what they say.]

They’re from people who aren’t even in my address book, and there aren’t any messages with that subject in my “Sent Items” box, so obviously my email address has been spoofed and the infected emails are actually being sent from an entirely different address; that’s what the worm is designed to do:

W32/MyDoom-A ‘spoofs’, using randomly chosen email addresses in the “To:” and “From:” fields as well as a randomly chosen subject line.

All the “undeliverable” error messages are coming from the same domain — I wish they could and would turn off this feature of their own virus protection for emails that contain the W32/MyDoom-A worm and its variants. I understand why it’s a good thing to do in general, informing people they’re sending infected emails when they may not be aware they’re doing so, but I don’t see the point if the virus or worm can spoof who it’s from — this “helpful” message is almost as irritating as the worm itself.

#1

Vicky | 2004 / 02 / 10 – 18:08

Our IT chaps had to send round an all-staff e-mail explaining the purpose of these virus alert mails; you wouldn’t believe the number of colleagues who have telephoned our support desk panicking that they’ve finally been found out for opening that .exe file…

#2

David | 2004 / 02 / 10 – 19:07

Re #1: Perhaps the email virus alert has gone the way of the pre-flight cabin crew warnings — no-one pays them a blind bit of notice until the plane’s going down. ;)

#3

Damian | 2004 / 02 / 11 – 11:26

I thought the biggest problem with this virus was that it increased traffic bring the internet to a stand still.

Surely this anti virus thing is just doubling the ammount of traffic and hence the virus has won.

#4

Daisy | 2004 / 02 / 12 – 11:51

Not a comment as such, just a quick hello to say that I’m reading and enjoying :-0))

#5

David | 2004 / 02 / 12 – 11:57

Re #4: Those kind of comments are always welcome. Thanks! :D

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