New Virus Alert: Life is Beautiful

Hi buddies

One of the friends of mine forwarded the below message. Its is new virus alert.

Quote:

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IMPORTANT WARNING

Please be extremely careful especially if using internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail and so on. This information arrived this morning, from Microsoft and Norton. Please send it to everybody you know who accesses the Internet. You may receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point presentation "Life is beautiful. pps" If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and delete it immediately. If you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying: "It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful", subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password. This is a new virus which started tocirculate on Saturday afternoon. WE NEED TO DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO STOP THIS VIRUS: AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus Softs are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself "life owner".

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MAte it seems to be a hoax..

Check these out..

Symantec

or

Hoaxinfo.com

Keep the home page of Hoaxinfo bookmarked for the next such message..
Now I am not sure but I think there may be a tutorial on just this subject..

Cheers

You can usually assume most of the "random" forwards from people are actually hoax's. Especially you notice how it's written, very general. Like "Saturday", well if a virus/worm/whatever came out usually a date is given. Plus you can tell, because all those hoax emails are starting to sound all the same.

There have been a few posts I've seen on AO where people have said that such and such a website emailed me this. I don't remember these off the top of my head, but I think there are some sites that will send people who are on a mailing list updated information on new viruses found (a thought for AO maybe? heheh). But those emails have structure, it looks like someone professional wrote it, not like a 2 year old who doesn't even understand how to use different paragraphs.

A word to the wise, do like what Und3ertak3r said and check out a hoax informational website before assuming that your email is "big news".

it helps to read and research before assuming anything!

I have to admit, whenever I see a line like

...Please send it to everybody you know who accesses the Internet....

I groan :(

Besides, isn't .pps is a M$ power point presentation?

http://www.library.mcgill.ca/edrs/se...ensions.html#P

Yes that's true. But in all honestly who knows what all virus makers will be using anymore. I mean with javascript viruses and such, maybe they could possibly set it up to run a small little script whenever you ran the power point file? Or something to that affect. But come on, it's a joke to begin with so maybe they were doing that just to be funny! ;-) Good point to point out though techtech.

Uncanny 'techtech' and 'AciDriveHB' should mention javascript and powerpoint files. I've found through bitter experience that powerpoint files may contain embedded .js files which seem to control the animation and such. I'm not 100% on this, but having had a good ganda through the logs on my network's email AV software this seems to be the case...

This makes blocking scripts, but allowing valid work files through a nightmare. :confused:

Of course, I'll happily subscribe to the 'who needs powerpoint anyway' argument... I'd rather presentation were done in PDF myself.

Insteresting! Thanks, Und3ertak3r. It got a forward email from my friend with "Life is beautiful". IT sounds like it is a msg from some big reliable corp.

They always look official that’s part of the point of a hoax :) . When ever I get an in-law (family too computer savvy to worry) calling me about some new virus they heard about over email I usually check this site http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/hoax/ first to make sure its a hoax before I tell them to ignore it. 99.9% of the time its a hoax.


I think some one was got, remember the date before you listen to any report today :)