There are some who take bloggers seriously and some who don't. Here is evidence that the murky world of cyber crime does and that they are attempting to profit from Blogs.
Paul Young, who writes prying1, notified me of this activity and has also put a warning on his blog about it.
Posted by Niall Kennedy on November 23, 2005. Tags: Technorati News
"It recently came to our attention that the Technorati brand name is being used in an attempt to inject a virus onto Windows computers. Although I personally have not received these emails, Technorati takes these false emails seriously.
The email in question states that Technorati has suspended your email account, lists some reasons why this may have happened, and invites you to open an attached file for more details on how to reactivate your Technorati account. The attached file, "important-details.zip," contains the W32.Mytob.MC@mm virus, opening a back door on your computer, lowering security settings, and allowing your computer to be used by the attackers for local access or distributing other content online.
Technorati's support and feedback departments as a rule do not send non-image attachments to its users. We will sometimes include a screenshot to better illustrate instructions. We also address each support request personally and attach our name to the message to let you know there is a real human on the other end.
We recommend investing in anti-virus software for your computers. Two of the most popular home software solutions are Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan. McAfee also offers a free scan of your computers for viruses."
Currently, there are over 100 variants of Mytob circulating and some are very hard to remove. Once a computer is infected, the computer can be used remotely, primarily to send Spam messages.
Here is a earlier post I did that shows the full spectrum of this type of activity, McAfee Study on Organized Crime and the Internet.
A further recommendation to help you remove any Mytob cyber nasties, you might discover on your system is the malware removal tool from the White Hats (good guys) at Microsoft.
Friday, November 25, 2005
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2 comments:
This is a very interesting posting, thanks for the information.
I d be curious to know your opinion about my hacker-posting but I dont want to post a link here, in case its considered spam.
Thanks for the link Ted - I have to wonder how many people you have helped through you blog and you will never know it! - Here is one reader that appreciates you.
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