2 replies to this topic

[David]

Many of you may have had disturbing e-mails which purport to be from PoliceSpecials.com which are unfathomable.

Whilst this might give the impression of being genuine, we would like to issue a serious word of warning and advice... IF WE E-MAIL YOU, OURS HAVE A POINT TO THEM and it is obvious that it is a genuine message from one of us. It leads us to believe that MYDOOM is making the rounds.

DON'T PANIC!!!
We haven't been hacked or anything like that. There is a virus doing the rounds, we think its the MYDOOM one actually, which arrives as an email with an attachment. If you run the attachment, as many thousands of people obviously do, it not only sends itself to everyone in your address book but it uses your address book to "make up" the "from" address.
So as a result we are sure lots of people are receiving emails which are supposedly from a policespecials.com email address but which are nothing of the sort. We at PS.com towers have had literally HUNDREDS of these, with sender addresses from the BBC, educational establishments, business, even police email addresses.
Your best defence is to get a GOOD virus scanner (one which also scans incoming emails), and keep it up to date. Also never, ever run an attachment in an email unless you are 101% sure of what it is, and who sent it.

[Lord Vader]

If you need advice on how to avoid your PC getting infected by this virus, or how to get rid of it if you've already got it, see this information from Microsoft.

Some more info (from McAfee):

The virus arrives in an email message as follows:

From: (Spoofed email sender)
Do not assume that the sender address is an indication that the sender is infected. Additionally you may receive alert messages from a mail server that you are infected, which may not be the case.

Subject: (Varies, such as)

• Error
  
• Status
  
• Server Report
  
• Mail Transaction Failed
  
• Mail Delivery System
  
• hello
  
• hi

Body: (Varies, such as)

• The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment.
  
• The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment.
  
• Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available.

Attachment: (varies [.bat, .exe, .pif, .cmd, .scr] - often arrives in a ZIP archive) (22,528 bytes)

examples (common names, but can be random)

• doc.bat
  
• document.zip
  
• message.zip
  
• readme.zip
  
• text.pif
  
• hello.cmd
  
• body.scr
  
• test.htm.pif
  
• data.txt.exe
  
• file.scr

How to Help Protect Against This Worm

If you ever receive a questionable e-mail message that contains an attachment—especially if it has a .zip file extension—do not open the attachment. If you cannot confirm with the sender that the message is legitimate and that the attachment is safe, delete the message immediately.

We at PoliceSpecials.com do not send unsolicited emails, and especially not with attachments, unless you have specifically requested something from us. If you receive an unexpected email which appears to be from a PoliceSpecials.com email address, with an attachment, you should delete it without reading it.

[Lord Vader]

See also this thread for a link to a free tool to clean your PC if you've got this virus...