Lest I forget...

[plonq]

... I bought one of those 1G USB memory sticks on the weekend.  The second thing I did with it (once I'd used it to help get atara's computer upgraded) was load it up with a buttload of music.  It's nice to be able to listen to MP3s at work without the contending with a CD ROM drive that sounds like a jet turbine spinning up.

Speaking of contending with things at work, either one of our staff, or one of our clients appears to have been hit by a virus/trojan.  I'll normally see one, maybe two pieces of external Spam show up in my inbox in a typical month, but in the last two days I've had 31 messages come in, each from a different address, and all of them in German.  Some sample subject lines:

"Volk wird nur zum zahlen gebraucht!"
"Graeberschaendung auf bundesdeutsche Anordnung"
"Paranoider Deutschenmoerder kommt in Psychiatrie"
"S.O.S. Kiez! Polizei schlaegt Alarm"

I have got a couple of (presumably faked) bounced emails, suggesting that my machine had attempted to send out a few bazillion messages.  I'll do a full system scan this morning to be safe.  For the moment I'm keeping all the email rather than deleting it outright because I'm curious to see how many I end up seeing before they manage to shut off the tap.

Comments

[dronon.livejournal.com]

All in German? I saw this mentioned in another person's journal - it's the Sober.q virus or worm (?) - (link)

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Very likely, or a related worm. They mutate so fast these days that it's hard to keep track of what letter they are up to.

This one spreads by apparently preying on people who are a) dumb enough to be running IE, and b) dumb enough to click on the attached link. It's a self-infecting worm that's one step removed from that alleged "Newfie Virus" (which is just an email that says, "Please forward this email to all of your friends and then delete the contents of your hard disk. Thanks.").