BIG VIRUS COMING !

BIG VIRUS COMING ! (Full Version)

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Aneirin -> BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 7:37:39 AM)
I don't know whether this is just a lot of hot air, but I received a message in my off site email today which goes like this ; BIG VIRUS COMING !!! PLEASE READ & FORWARD !! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP. PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS! You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,' regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it. If you receive a mail called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it! Shut down your computer immediately. This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept. Call me cynical if you like, but these messages that say pass to all you know make me suspicious, but if it is genuine, well here it is

thishereboi -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 7:43:57 AM)
Well according to Snopes.... http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp

chamberqueen -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 8:14:39 AM)
Try this link: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_postcard_virus.htm It points out that the Snopes information has been misunderstood. For all of us on the internet it is important to be careful of attachments, especially from sources we don't know, and to keep an active antivirus program. If you are ever concerned about a possible hoax just look it up on the internet. People who write virus programs in their many forms rarely announce that it is coming in advance. The get their kicks from silently creating chaos.

GreedyTop -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 8:26:34 AM)
god, I love Snopes....

Smith117 -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 8:35:08 AM)
I read a tidbit on either a tech blog or somewhere similar that said those mass-forwarded emails are threats themselves. Most anything you get that says "send this to X people at once" only serve to flood bandwidth in the hopes of slowing down the overall system. I never forward them and usually (playfully) ridicule my friends who send them because they are only contributing to the hysteria.

Owner59 -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 8:44:45 AM)
Rut-roo.... Thanks to the OP.

Termyn8or -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 8:53:03 AM)
There is actually a way to fix it I think if you got XP Pro. I was working on a PC and just about gave up on the OS and started to format, but stopped. I remembered I had a little ten gig laying around so I loaded it with the same version XP on that machine.Then reinstalled the original drive as a slave. The thought there was that it could run off the ten gig and be able to use the data on the original drive, which was substantial. Upon reboot I get this message that the other drive is screwed up and asked if I wanted it repaired, I hit yes. It went through it's rigamaroll and then said it was finished. I get in explorer and find that the files are there. I decided to give the original drive another try and voila, it worked, it booted normally and everything worked. Maybe I am an old fuddie duddie, but I need no virus protection. My family and friends and I do not generally correspond via email. We have those new fangled telephones. Once in a while we do email each other but usually it is not to send an ecard. Also I do not maintain any kind of contact list. Actually I don't see how this could really propogate. If it does it must send out the emails and then later destroy the boot sector, otherwise it is going nowhere. If it does though, it probably should be classified as a trojan with a payload. If that is the case it is very insidious. I have decent luck with PCs mainly because of the things I don't do. Unfortunately recently I had to just about prohibit anyone else from touching it. If I let someone get their email here they can put in their password, I don't want it. I also let people select music from the toolbar, very little else. It is all done with me there. If you don't have a PC and don't want me to see your emails, go to a library. Sorry, this is web based mail and it is the most dangerous when it comes to a virus or malicious code. Sorry, I have been downloading for over five years and have a quite customized OS. I am not losing that over a stupid ecard. What was the saying ? Oh yeah - An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And then there is what Murphy told me - You make your own luck. That said, McAffee can't do anything about it eh ? I would suggest rereading the last two lines. T

Missokyst -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 10:29:53 AM)
LOL me too. I love snopes.. but wouldnt it be ironic if some saavy virus maker made a virus like this that was debunked on Snopes and people would open it because snopes said it was ok? Those programmers are always a step ahead! Kyst

sub4hire -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 11:11:26 AM)
Question for all of you. Has there ever actually been a virus that takes out your entire system at once like the warnings claim? I've had virus's over the years but never anything like that. So, just curious as to if they exist.

Smith117 -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 11:39:17 AM)
I once knew a girl who admitted to me (after calling me for tech support) that she was just clicking through porn popups one after the other. I asked her if she was going to go to a free clinic to host a gang-bang, since that's basically what she'd just done with her computer. After installing some sweepers on her machine and rebooting, it was already too late. The whole machine was a paperweight. It would pretend to boot, then say a certain file was missing with the command to reboot to fix it. You reboot and end up back at the same failed screen.

sub4hire -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 11:41:56 AM)
So could you re-install the operating system or did you need a new hard drive?

Smith117 -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 11:51:44 AM)
I was getting the impression the whole thing was bricked. Another guy she called with more knowledge about it than me said she just needed a new machine. Also, I'd called the geek squad one day for an issue I had. . . When he came, I saw a flash drive in his case and asked what was on it. He replied that it had about 17 viruses that were each singularly capable of bricking a machine. He also said that you didn't need to access the drive to have the viruses ruin the system. They did their deed the moment the drive was jacked into a USB port. I then jokingly asked if he had anyone ever refuse to pay for his repairs. He just smiled and said that's what the flash drive was for.

sub4hire -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 12:38:57 PM)
Well, I can happily say I've never had a virus like that. My husband/dom gave me a virus around Christmas. It took me an entire two week's to get it fully off my machine. Going line by line through my registry. None of the major virus software players had heard of it yet. About a week after I eradicated the last of it...McAfee had a fix for it..what a mess it was.

Smith117 -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 12:42:49 PM)
Maybe your machine was "patient zero."

BlackPhx -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 3:12:06 PM)
Long ago and far away there was CIH ( I think that was the name) it was a boot sector virus that passed via executable files such as stripper gram email card or Bonzo. Once it infected your boot sector it targeted your bios on your motherboard..if that fried, the only thing you could do was buy a new motherboard and hard drive. Fortunately it did have a payload date..meaning it became active on a certain day. If you could catch it before the trigger date, you could clean it off your system. There have been others since. Here's what Trend Micro has on one variant of it Malware type: File Infector Aliases: Virus.Win9x.CIH (Kaspersky), W95/CIH.1003a (McAfee), W95/CIH-10xx (Sophos), Virus:Win95/CIH.1003 (Microsoft) In the wild: Yes Destructive: Yes Language: English Platform: Windows Encrypted: No Overall risk rating: [image]http://www.trendmicro.com/global/common/images/icons/status-gray-long.gif[/image] Low Reported infections: [image]http://www.trendmicro.com/global/common/images/icons/3-low.gif[/image] Low Damage potential: [image]http://www.trendmicro.com/global/common/images/icons/3-high.gif[/image] High Distribution potential: [image]http://www.trendmicro.com/global/common/images/icons/3-low.gif[/image] Low Description: This destructive file infector inserts itself into the free space at the end of a PE file and in between the file as well. The change in file size is not noticeable. Once the virus is triggered, it overwrites the hard drive and destroys FLASH BIOS. The virus has three variants and each is triggered on a separate date. CIH V1.2 is triggered on April 26, CIH v1.3 is triggered on June 26 and CIH v1.4 is triggered when the current system date is 26. A system infected with PE_CIH v1.2, a message is displayed upon reboot. This virus only infects Windows 95/98 systems and does not affect Windows NT/2000 systems. For additional information about this threat, see: Solution Technical Details Statistics Description created: Apr. 25, 2001 1:45:50 PM GMT -0800

Missokyst -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 3:40:26 PM)
My son got a virus that wiped him out, no data was recoverable. It was all gibberish. His computer rebooted and would not restart. I removed his drive to check for data files and got a bunch of squares and other odd symbols. We ended up reformatting his hard drive and starting fresh. It is a good thing we keep a backup network drive for all our files, and each of us has our individual usb backups handy. Its good being in security! Kyst quote: ORIGINAL: sub4hire Question for all of you. Has there ever actually been a virus that takes out your entire system at once like the warnings claim? I've had virus's over the years but never anything like that. So, just curious as to if they exist.

windchymes -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 6:12:16 PM)
I've gotten a couple of nasty things over the past few years, but not from an email attachment. I make it a rule just to never open email attachments unless I absolutely know the sender actually sent it to me. One time it was a bad registry key that my Ad-Aware took care of. Another time, about a year ago, I picked up something really bad from Limewire (I know.....[8\|] ) that kept me from linking to the internet, to my spyware programs, to my virus scan, everything. I couldn't tell you now everything I did, but it took me 8 hours of sitting in front of the computer, running scrub programs, rebooting, somehow getting into Microsoft online support which was actually helpful that time...it directed me to some kind of "return to previous day's settings" function or something like that. That got me back online where I was able to clean it up and get running normally again.

Asherdelampyr -> RE: BIG VIRUS COMING ! (8/21/2008 6:21:10 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Smith117 Also, I'd called the geek squad one day for an issue I had. . . This right here, basically invalidates everything else you could possibly have to contribute There are a few viruses that used to be able to completely kill a system, and there used to be BIOS viruses that were capable of frying a system by overheating it and killing the fans, By and large they dont exist anymore as Windows is better at stopping them, and Linux doesn't get them at all. that being said... Yes it is possible or a virus to immediately wipe your boot.ini as well as the explore.exe file, reducing your system to the capability of a 4 yr old with downs syndrome. In Vista this is close to impossible but still can happen. With software almost anything is possible, however it is incredibly improbable to have a virus affect the hardware anymore. and yes wind, system restore rocks... even more so in Vista since you can run it outside of the operating system in XP you can do something similar through Recovery Console, but I dont remember the exact command.

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