Virus from Incka's staff?

**incka** · 04-01-2004, 09:59 AM

Look what I just got in my email:

Hello user of Incka.com e-mail server,

Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content)
outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by
a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe,
follow the instructions.

Further details can be obtained from attached file.

Sincerely,
The Incka.com team http://www.incka.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

avast! Antivirus: Inbound message INFECTED:
\[UPX] (Win32:Beagle-C [Unp]) was deleted from the message.

Virus Database (VPS): 0403-23, 03/31/2004
Tested on: 01/04/2004 17:44:06
avast! - copyright (c) 2000-2004 ALWIL Software.

Scary how clever virus are getting... I wonder who send it...

I'm scared, I could be sued by someone for this...

**Westech** · 04-01-2004, 10:27 AM

This is all over the place now. I remember you were talking about getting into hosting a while back. If you are providing email services to anyone other than yourself you should probably send out a warning about this to your users letting them know that this email is not from you. This one really has the potential to fool a lot of people. None of my customers fell for it (as far as I know...) but quite a few of the users that I support at my day job fell for this when it first hit.

You're right, it is scary how clever they are getting. I think the ultimate email virus of the future will be one that does something like the one above, but also harvests the signature file from the sender's email client and adds the user's signature to the messages it sends out. Once that starts happening, there will be almost no way for the average user to separate the real email from the viruses. At the university where I work, we are advising all users who get an attachment they were not expecting to call the sender to verify they really sent it before opening it no matter who the sender is or what the email says.