Intentional Virus
Charles Johnson
Thu Aug 22, 2002 at 3:30 pm PDT • Views: 616
I’ve been receiving a lot of emails containing the Klez virus recently, and I get so much email that I haven’t paid too much attention to this.
The Klez virus works by scanning an infected hard disk for email addresses and sending copies of itself to as many addresses as it finds. The addresses can be found in cached web pages, Word documents, etc.—not just in a user’s email address book. So I’ve received many copies of Klez from people who obviously had no idea their computers were infected.
The attachments in a Klez-infected email typically are disguised as games, or virus protection updates, or other types of files that might look interesting enough to entice a naive user into opening them. Since they’re mailed out randomly, the attachments are named to appeal to the widest cross-section of people.
A little while ago, though, I received a Klez email that was almost certainly not a random virus mailing, because the attachment (and the subject of the email) was: DRUDGE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB SPEECH TRANSCRIPT.
Note to the loser who’s been harassing me: you’ve been wasting your time trying to infect my computer, idiot, but you just got me interested in tracking you down.
Frank says: