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[Vatsal]

Alert on Email Viruses !!

Lot of emails are being received daily by us many of them unsolicited and containing unfamiliar addresses. Generally these emails are for marketing a product, however a few of them may contain an email borne virus.

Recently a spurt has been seen in these kinds of viruses which has been affecting millions of computers worldwide. Each and every computer connected to internet is vulnerable to such attacks.

Malicious email with a virus may contain a known return address or it may contain information prompting you to open the email and carry out some activity. Please use extreme caution while reading emails - the following checks are recommeded to help you decide what to do with an email-

Check 1 - Whether the email is from someone known.

Check 2 - Whether you have received email from the same sender before.

Check 3 - Do you expect an email from this sender.

Check 4 - Does the subject matter and sender seem related.

Check 5 - Use Antivirus to scan the message.

These checks should be applied to every email which you receive.

Some recent viruses which are traversing the net are -

W32/Sobig.F worm - which is an email-borne malicious program with an attachment that has a .pif extension. The email messages may appear from random addresses and have a Subject: line such as

Re: Thank You!
Re: Details
Re: Your details
Re: Re: My details
Re: Approved
Re: Your application
Re: Wicked screensaver
Re: That movie

Recently a new mass mailing virus masquerading as a security patch from Microsoft has been circulating on the Internet.

The email has the following subject line -

New Microsoft Critical Patch
Current Microsoft Critical Patch
Current Critical Patch
Current Network Patch
Current Network Critical Upgrade
New Microsoft Security Pack
Current Microsoft Security Update
Microsoft Critical Patch
Newest Net Security Update
Latest Net Security Patch
New Network Upgrade

and has the following attachments -

Installer8.exe
Installer64.exe
upgrade3871.exe
install8.exe
Qemf.exe
Q262891.exe
Q566953.exe
Q551852.exe
Q875932.exe
update.exe
update88.exe

These emails contain virus therefore they should be handled carefully.

Please remember to use extreme caution while on internet and while reading emails.

Also please update your virus definitions regularly.