Virus attack: W32.Skynet.C worm (aka Worm.SomeFool.B)

We have received some mail from people who have received this worm in an email claiming to be from us.

Unfortunately for us, this particular worm "spoofs" email addresses. That is to say, it lies about where it was sent from. I have checked all of our network and none of our machines were ever infected with this worm. It seems that someone who has a record of our email address somewhere on their system is infected with this worm, and it is sending copies of itself out (without this person knowing it) with our email address, falsely, as sender.

I would strongly recommend that everyone installs antivirus software on their system. Search the Internet and you will find several packages that are free to home users. The important thing is that it should be able to automatically update itself with the latest virus information so that it can recognise new viruses, worms and trojans as the virus-writers release them.

One last thing - this worm is a Windows-only worm. I run Linux. The worm cannot run on a Linux machine. There is no easy way to find out which machine really did pass on the worm. The owner of the machine is not to blame, being just another victim of the virus-writer, but they really do need to get up-to-date antivirus software installed.

Saturday, 3 April 2004 13:45