Jeff Nightbyrd's email account full and bouncing
Michael Eisenstadt
michaele@ando.pair.com
Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:59:19 -0500
I note that Jeff N's sbcglobal.net email address
is full and just bounced an agl maillist posting.
This permits me to conclude that Jeff has posted
to Usenet groups using his address without
obfuscating it with text like
nightbyrd@sbcglobalNOSPAMIMNOTKIDDING.net
When a poster does that she often instructs human
readers to remove text to reply at the bottom of
her letter.
I too lazily used my michaele@ando.pair.com address
in posting to Usenet groups. A kobold or maybe it
is a Osama bin Laden sympathizer has brought down
millions of Usenet posters email addresses. This
attack commenced last Friday. he/she has automatically
gathered up (mined as the slang has it) addresses
used in the Usenet groups. Those that put
antispamming phrases in their addresses are reporting
NOT getting the bombs.
When analysized by experts SWEN turns out to be very
cleverly written in terms of dicking around with Windows
OS registry key anomalies to hide the worm and it is
being distributed so cleverly that it is currently
impossible to trace.
If you are using a Web based email address and
are receiving 142k and 155k SWEN virus files,
you are royally fucked unless you enjoy dicking
with Yahoo email commands to flush hundreds of
virii every morning.
If you are using a POP email connection you and
are likewise getting SWEN (which spelled backwards
is News) virii, you are also getting royally fucked
if you have to download them with a dialin phone
connection.
If you have NEVER posted to Usenet groups with your
current email address, you may not have seen SWEN
in your INBOX and thus have NOT been royally fucked.
I found the fix for POP email users with a dialin
phone connection on Monday: download and install
MailWasher which can grab size, Subject and From
of all of the email in your provider's mail server
which is waiting for you to download.
MailWasher does this WITHOUT downloading them and
then displays them for you to inspect.
You can then delete them through MailWasher from
your provider's mail server WITHOUT deloading them.
Now I enable MailWasher BEFORE opening my email
reader, this to flush all the bombs into the
bit bucket pour antsy deer. Only then you open up
the email reader which will then download the
email you want to read.
So now one checks MailWasher before checking for mail
the way we used to.
SWEN is not commercially oriented spam and the motives
of its designer can only be inferred.
Mike