Email worms from ControlBooth.com

[dvsDave]

I have just received several emails stating that webmaster at controlbooth dot com has been sending people random emails with viruses and worms attached.

I'd like to first assure you that it was not myself sending those emails. The return address is being faked/spoofed. I have checked my email logs and I have never send mail to any of those people who say I did.

I also have Norton Antivirus 2004 running and I set it to try to update every 8 hours. It scans my incoming and outgoing mail. Any email that I send you, I can assure you, is clean.

Please do not forward the email to me, instead copy the full header information to a new email and send it to me with the subject line of "got spoofed email from cb"

thank you for your continued support of controlbooth.com
-dvsDave

 

[Mayhem]

Yep - this is a pretty standard characteristic of most of the nasties going around and is a defence mechanism designed to mask its presence.

We all know that the new viruses can auto generate email messages attaching themselves in an attempt to spread further and infect more machines. They do this by randomly selecting email addresses form your address book. They also pick one to use as the return address and this is what you are seeing here. The only reason that your email is being seen as the source is that the person who has an infected computer has your email in their address book.

I know of some people who have a bogus email address as the first entry in their address book so that they know if they receive a “invalid email address” email come back to them that they have a virus on their computer. Nice idea, but unfortunately very hit and miss as the selection of the recipient email addresses are random.

The key is to have an antivirus package protecting your computer and to update the virus definitions on a regular basis. Symantec (the people who bring you the Norton products) have a web-based system check, which you can use to scan your machine for infections and also security risks. Obviously the scan takes time and this is dependant upon your connection speed and the size of the information on your computer. However, I strongly recommend it to anyone who doesn’t have any antivirus software or hasn’t updated the definitions recently.

The URL is: http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym

I use the Norton products but every now and then I do a web-based scan just to be sure. After all, some viruses are designed to block (or at least interfere) with your protection software.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[KKRoadie]

I get the same emails at www.roadie.net I get about 3000 emails a day, many of them infected (and like you I am fully protected...I practice "safe surfing")...The more people have you in your address book the more times you are going to get people accusing you of trying to infect them.

And don't even get me started on SPAM....takes up about 3 hours a week and that's after using filters, etc....

Technology...can't live with it...can't live without it.