Automated PC Solutions
VACM - Virus Alerts for the Common Man
Automated PC Solutions
VACM - Virus Alerts for the Common Man
This is a ploy to catch people off guard and many will, no doubt, be duped into infecting their computers. See the VACM Alert article below for the full story, a picture of the bogus video player and how to know, in the future, if a video really is a video.
Beware of emails having a subject of:
Amazing Independence Day salute or...
Amazing firework 2008
America for You and Me
America the Beautiful
Celebrate Independence
Celebrate with Pride
Celebrating Fourth of July
Celebrations have already begun
Fabulous Independence Day firework
God bless America
Happy Fourth of July
Happy Independence Day
Independence Day firework broke all records
Light up the sky
Proud to be an American
Sparkling Celebration of Independence Day
Spectacular fireworks show
Super 4th!
The best of 4th of July Salute
From the hackers who brought you the "Storm" worm, we have another attempt
to steal your identity and use your computer to carry out spam and malware
campaigns
for organized crime.
This email contains a link to an alleged 4th of July video. If you click on the
link, you will get what looks like a video player in your web browser. But,
if you click on the browser, the web site will attempt to download a file
called "fireworks.exe" to your computer. If you allow the file to be downloaded
to your system, you will not be celebrating your independance!
If you clicked the link in the attack email, this is the bogus video player
you would see:
It is actually only a "picture of a video player" on your screen. This picture is
actually
a link to
the virus file that the hackers want you to allow into your system.
Per their instructions in the picture above "If you want to see the best Independance
Day firework just click on the video and run it". If you click on the video and
then click on "Run" when Windows asks you, they fooled you into telling Windows
that it is OK to run "fireworks.exe", which is the virus installer. Stay alert, folks.
The hackers behind this "Dorf" virus family of attacks, also known as the Storm worm, have targeted other holidays in the past, including Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, etc. The reason that they do this is simple - it works. Many people fall for tricks like this all the time. Companies and individuals need to protect themselves with up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware protection and learn how to not be caught by this kind of clever wording trick.
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* What You Should Do
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1. You are probably smart enough to simply delete suspicious emails and
to not open "unknown" attachments. But, this attack is simply an
email with a link to a web page in it. Harmless enough, right? Wrong!
What you have
to is that whenver you view a web page with a video player
on it, you should never get a Windows message asking you to download
a file (much less a .EXE file). That is the critical tell-tale. When a web video
player exists on a web page, it already has the video file it needs to show
you. You should never get a Windows message asking if you want to "Save"
or "Open" or "Run" a file. Moral of this story is to add this sneaky tactic to
your list of "Gotchas" and then...
2. Delete the email
3. Also... always let Windows Update install the latest Windows updates to
keep your system as safe as possible. Microsoft is constantly fixing bugs
and vulnerabilities in Windows and that is what Windows Update is for. It
is an automatic way to make sure you have the latest fixes from Microsoft.
4. Make sure your antivirus and antispyware software is always up to date.
Most antivirus softwares should catch this attack if you happen to go to
far with the mouse clicks.
Best Regards,
Marc Deschenes, VACM Editor
The VACM Project at
Automated PC Solutions
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*** Be sure to check out the appendix at the end of this alert
******** APPENDIX - Handy How-To Tips ********** * How To Boot into Safe Mode Shut the computer down so that the power is off.
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