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View Full Version : Spam from Microsoft or a Virus???


Jimmy Dodd
09-22-2003, 02:09 PM
The last few days I have been getting hammered with emails from senders claiming to be Microsoft advising me to install the "September 2003, Cumulative Patch." I am averaging between 5 and 10 emails per day with attachments and they are overflowing my hotmail mailbox. Some have addresses that have microsoft in them, some have msn in them, some have technet in them, and some are just bizarre. I am getting multiple emails from each sender. The subject lines vary.

Is everyone getting these? Are they legit? I keep my system patched (manually) and the last thing I want is to run an attachment from someone.

Edit: I am also starting to see several messages from yahoo.com's mailserver claiming that they were unable to deliver an email to some address that I don't recognize. Of course the To: address of the email from yahoo.com is [email protected]. This started about the same time.

Small Town Man
09-22-2003, 02:28 PM
It's a virus!

MS will NEVER EVER send out patches by mail!

Keep your virus scan software up to date!

David Prahl
09-22-2003, 02:53 PM
Small Town Man is right. This is the Swen (or "Gibe") worm. Better patch your boxes!

Jimmy Dodd
09-22-2003, 02:58 PM
I figured as much. For those who haven't seen it the return address looks as though it's from Microsoft and the body of the email looks like a web page with MS graphics, etc. It contains an attachment with various names. I've deleted about forty copies of it so far.

Sooner Al
09-22-2003, 04:12 PM
Text deleted

Kati Compton
09-22-2003, 06:20 PM
I would hope that REAL emails from Microsoft would have better punctuation/grammar/spelling. The emails that I've received all have the first sentence starting with a lower-case letter, which to me does *NOT* look official. ;)

jbachandouris
09-22-2003, 06:33 PM
I have only received one such email and Outlook blocked the attached file. Strange, my antivirus software is up to date and when I ran a scan of my pc, it did not show a virus even with this email in the deleted folder. Perhaps Outlook did not even allow the .exe into my machine at all.


Off topic---anyone tempted by the new Dells coming out on Thursday? I'm PDA-less right now and want the best bang for the buck!

David Prahl
09-22-2003, 10:46 PM
Off topic---anyone tempted by the new Dells coming out on Thursday? I'm PDA-less right now and want the best bang for the buck!

OH YEAH! "Tempted" would be putting it mildly!

We've yet to see a real photo, but it looks like a great device for an incredible price. I tend to be Dell-biased, but I love my X5. I strongly suggest you look at Dell, but wait for at least 2 reviews of the X3 before you make a decision.

easylife
09-22-2003, 10:51 PM
I got an email from Microsoft about the Blaster worm. I was very, very leery about going to the link provided, but it turned out that it really was from Microsoft! 8)