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The Writing Life: Huge Disaster Averted
By Deb Gallardo
I’ve been out of town since Thursday afternoon and just arrived home this morning (Monday). My email Inbox, as expected, was overflowing — 503 emails to be precise, 486 of them unread.
I began the process of weeding out the messages that I wanted to read from amongst the dross destined for the cyber trash bin, and unfortunately, grew tired of the process fairly quickly. At some point I had a brain hiccup and sent 200 unread emails to the trash, so I had to go sort through THAT folder. urrrrgh!
By this time I had been slogging through email for about an hour, so I wasn’t just bored, I was getting sleepy-bored and impatient to move on with the actual work I needed to do, like write a post for my blog which I’d had to neglect for half a week.
For a change of pace, I moved to my “suspect email” folder, which had only 23 messages in it. And that’s where I almost made a fatal – well, serious - mistake.
In this particular folder was a notification from Hallmark that I’d received an e-card from a friend. The message LOOKED legitimate, but it’s not anywhere near my birthday — tomorrow is my HALF birthday, but people don’t even remember my actual birthday, let alone my half-birthday — and Christmas is past.
Since I know this kind of thing can be faked (spoofed), I didn’t want to click on an email link, so I went to my browser and typed in hallmarkcards (dot) com. I didn’t use hallmark (dot) com, because that was the webaddress listed in the email. But I was taken to hallmark (dot) com anyway, and the links and graphics of the legitimate site that I took the time to “mouse over,” matched those in the email. I didn’t check EVERY link, however…
I didn’t know how to check the link to the e-card, so I … well, I downloaded the file, which was a “.exe” file. Yes, a red flag was waving, yes, those voices in the back of my head were rumbling, yes, I should have known better! I’ve been the one telling all my friends NOT to click on links inside of emails from people they don’t know since 1996. Except, this appeared to be from Hallmark, and I DO get email from them.
*sigh*
I plead fatigue, email burnout and, OKAY! sheer stupidity. But wait. There’s more.
I have DSL internet service, so my downloads generally speed right along at about, oh, 800 kb/s. Not exactly warp speed, but not too shabby. Beats the heck out of dial-up. EXCEPT…the download from this email was dragging its feet something terrible. The speed varied from 0 b/s (stalled) to 600 b/s (snail’s pace), to 3 kb/s (tortoise speed). The file was just over 700 k and it took almost 3 minutes to download! Surely, I thought, Hallmark has a bigger download “pipeline” than this. By that time the voices in my head were roaring and shouting, accompanied by a 200-piece orchestra playing the Fauré Requiem.
This was not good.
As soon as the download finished, I cranked up my anti-virus software and scanned that puppy, er, executable e-card. That word “execute” took on a whole new meaning when the scan revealed not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR TROJAN VIRUSES in that one little file, including a link to an IRC. (That’s geek speak for, as I understand it, a connection to a remote computer that could have totally controlled my machine! If any of you can explain it better in clearer language, please comment below. I’d be grateful.)
*Gulp*
After hastily deleting the file, purging my Recycle Bin, deleting the email from my webmail server and removing it from the trash bin as well, I rescanned my computer for viruses and found none. And I still laid hands on my computer and prayed it was okay!
Then I went back to Hallmark’s site to find out where I could report this. Turns out they have a warning about it, but it’s buried in their customer service section. Not really helpful, dear helpful people. But I did copy the full headers (you should always do this if you’re reporting an email), pasted them at the beginning of the forwarded email and sent it to the hallmark spoof-reporting address.
Next I checked my favorite hoax-urban-legend-myths sites: snopes (dot) com and scambusters (dot) com. Sure enough, they list a virus with a subject line saying variously that you’ve been sent a postcard, e-card, e-greeting, etc., but the link is really an infected file. If an email tells you “you’ve got mail,” you should probably delete it!
And remember to listen to those voices! Well, maybe not ALL of the voices. Some of them have really strange things to say. At least mine do…
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3 Comments »
January 29th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Hi, Deb,
Yikes! Sorry to hear about your virus scare! What a yucky way to start the week. But, on the bright side, things are bound to get better as the week progresses. Right?
Suzanne Lieurance
The Working Writer’s Coach
http://www.workingwriterscoach.com
January 31st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Hi Deb,
Have you ever consider using a Linux distro for your main, working operating system?
Theres a lot of benefits, one of which is the ability to laugh at viruses. You don’t really need uberuser skillz to work Linux anymore either, especially if you go for something highly preconfigured, like Mint Linux.
You can try it out right alongside windows too.
Just a thought.
Stuart
January 31st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Stuart,
Thanks for taking time to comment here today. I have considered Linux off and on, ever since I first heard of it. It’s something I will give strong thought to when next I buy a computer. For right now, I’ll keep XP only because at least it’s a known entity. Also, I’ve read many times that it’s best to keep the OS that came with your computer because of configuration issues. I’m somewhat tech savvy, but not that much, as I proved to myself when trying to install XP on an old Windows 98 IBM computer. I’m not in the least interested in Vista, that’s for sure.
Watch for me on your blog. I caught your post in the Yahoo group. I’m still digging out from under emails, so until I get those cleared up, I can’t do much of anything else. Makes me want to change my email address! *grin*
Thanks again for commenting. And thanks for the Linux suggestion.
All the best,
Deb