Explorer update plus porn
This is one of the latest alerts from F-Secure, an international lab that keeps tabs on computer viruses, worms, spams , scams and other cybercrap. A co-worker already got the e-mail it warns of today:
Time and again, we have always advised users that it is a good practice to keep your software applications updated. However, it does not seem so after today.
E-mails that supposedly came from admin@microsoft.com are advising users to upgrade to IE 7.0 Beta 2. The e-mail details are as follows:
From: admin[at]microsoft[dot]com
Subject: Internet Explorer 7 Downloads
Body:
The picture links to various sites containing a file named ie7.0.exe. This file is activated by clicking on the embedded image.
The ie7.0.exe file is already detected as Virus.Win32.Grum.A.
As the actual IE 7 Beta is available, and with this authentic looking image, it might be difficult to see off hand that this is malicious.
Remember to always get your updates from the original developer’s site.
March 30th, 2007 at 7:13 am
There are two ways I generally use to figure out if an email is authentic or not:
- Check the priority. For whatever reason the viral emails are marked high priority (a little red exclamation point in Outlook) more so than average emails.
- Hover over the link without clicking. The web address direct will appear either right at your mouse icon or in the bottom left hand corner of the desktop. In this case, the address included “man candy” - which I thought was highly unlikely for Microsoft.