[coastie65]

Hi All, Just received this in my mail from my Sister. This was sent to all the employees at Verizon. It looks to be pretty serious. This has been confirmed by Norton, McAfee, and Snopes.


" You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD', regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disk C of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. For this reason, you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it. If you receive an e-mail called 'POSTCARD' , even though sent to you by a friend, DO NOT OPEN IT ! Shut your computer down immediately. This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It is classified by Micro$oft as the most destructive virus ever. The virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero sector of the HDD, where the information is kept." I don't think this is a hoax, but it seems as this has come up before, so take it with a grain of salt, but be careful. coastie65

[Flashorn]

Hey coastie!!



I GOT that specific e-mail. It was sent to me by unknown party and fortunately Gmail's spam filter caught it.



I always review my spam box just in case a good one slipped through.



In this case gmail was right.



Along with the PostCard there were others of the same nature.



Something about BirthDay Cards and one other that stuck out



about a vacation of somekind.



I deleted the hole spam folder and the PC did not seem to have suffered any ill



effects from this.



For the next week or so, I will Sandbox My e-mail client just to make sure that nothing gets to my hard drive.



Thanks for this info. coastie.It sure helps to be well informed.



FLASHORN.

[coastie65]

Hey flashorn, I just converted this thing to a document, but I guess I screwed up as this thread is still here. Oh well, I guess a little redundancy won't hurt. I exspect if there is anything to it, PCWorld will have something shortly. If so, remember you heard it here first. :^0 coastie

[Flashorn]

Hey coastie!!



You didn't screw up!

The tread stays but , we also have the option of "Ranting" on your DOC. also!!LOL!!



FLashorn.

[Evildave]

Well aww shucks. Pesky Windows incompatibility won't let me 'catch' that virus. Such a shame I run Linux.

[mcbarker]

Hey, I thought April 1st was over... !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

[coastie65]

Hey flashorn, Yep, suppose so, guess you could call that convience. !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1! Took a bit of a break and revamped my security. I wasn't real happy with AVG 8.0 so switched to Avast as well as added SUPERantispyware for some redundancy.



Hey mcb, I don't know if it is for real or not, but it seems to be, and a lot of people are taking it serious and it seems to be backed up by the sources mentioned. coastie

[mcbarker]

Hey Coastie... It's an urban legend that's been around since last summer. Google it and see for yourself, or go to THIS SITE for a description of it.

[coastie65]

Hey evildave, Yeah you guys running Linux miss out on all the excitement. :D coastie

[coastie65]

Hey mcb, May well be as it seemed awful familiar and I do seem to remember something like that sometime back. That thing came from my Sister and was sent out on the Verizon interoffice e-mail to all and she just forwarded it to me. I put it up as a precaution because who knows what may be lurking out there. I have and had one problem with the whole scenario. It supposedly comes from someone on your contact list. Well, just how would the malicious so and so know who was on my contact list? I have a little problem trying to reconcile that, and as I said, it seems as if I had heard of that sometime before and you confirmed that it had come up in the past. I also got an alert from my sister at that time as well, as I recall, and as I also recall, it was said that there was no fix then either. The only thing I've noticed of late is an upswing in Phishers. coastie

[mphenterprises]

Hi Coastie. Very good information. Thank you very much for sharing. Just a heads up. I edited your Document to remove the dialog. Similar viruses have surfaced over the years, Snoopy, I Love You, etc.

We are lucky. At least we have the tools and knowledge to correct any issue that comes our way.

Thanks again.

[coastie65]

Hey mph, Thanks. I put it out there just in case, but not really sure how much substance is there though. I guess better safe than sorry, but then again, I would hate to perpetuate a myth. coastie

[Rabbit]

Hi Coastie - Rabbit here. The very best URL to keep on tap (create a Desktop Shortcut) is hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBHoaxIndex.html (click link) opens to Malicious Code Warnings. In the right column, click on the last item "Olympic Torch Virus HOAX" - here is the text from the webpage:
h3. Olympic Torch Virus Hoax
June 2006

This message is a mixture of several other virus hoax warnings; none of them real.

{noformat} Warning READ AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
Get this sent around to your contacts ASAP...we don't need
this spreading around.....
PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND
CONTACTS:
You should be alert during the next days:
Do not open any message with an attached filed called
"Invitation" regardless of who sent it, It is a virus that opens an Olympic
Torch which "burns" the whole hard disc C of your computer. This virus will
be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact
list, that is why you should send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is
better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open
it.
If you receive a mail called "invitation", though sent by a
friend,do not open it and shut down your computer immediately.
This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has been
classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.
This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is
no repair yet for this kind of virus.
This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc,
where the vital information is kept.
SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW,
COPY THIS E-MAIL AND SEND! IT TO YOUR FRIENDS
AND REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL
OF US.
{noformat}

{noformat}The one that includes the POSTCARD is a variation of this same HOAX.{noformat}

{noformat}Rabbit {noformat}

[piyushsingh]

thanx for the info coastie.
I checked all my mails , couldnt get any glimpse of this thing. Maybe i ve deleted it as i regularly empty the junk/spam folder or maybe that pest is still on the way.

[coastie65]

Hey Rabbit, Yeah, there certain things about that I had some problems with, not the least of which was the fact that I thought I seen before some time back. This thing got sent out on Verizon's interoffice e-mail to all employees, and then my sister sent the thing to me. I thought that she had sent virtually the same thing last year sometime. Geez, I thought they had worn that stuff out with the Y2K bug, but I guess not. coastie

[coastie65]

Hi piyush, I think it may be a hoax, but then again, I guess it doesn't hurt to be a little extra vigilant. Remember the Y2K bug that wasn't ? coastie

[piyushsingh]

ya it may be a, but as the linux users are feeling safe ,vista users need not worry about this too. Those who have UAC enabled will be well protected by such attacks as uac is yet to be bypassed . The biggest protection tool is uac in vista, which is mostly disabled by most ppl though and the system32 folder is double protected even if uac is disabled.
But its always well know, prevention is always better than cure . ;-)

[coastie65]

Hi piyush, Yeah, most people have disabled UAC in Vista because it is a pain. I think this is probably a case of someone having too much time on their hands and cooked up a scheme to see how far it would go. coastie

[coastie65]

Time to close this, it is old