STHC-L: The Science, Technology and Health Care Archives Forum

Warning re: Viruses, bugs, worms, Trojan horses, etc.

• Date:   Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:35:59 -0700 (Pacific Standard Time)
• To:   sthc-l@library.ucla.edu
• From:   Russell A. Johnson <rjohnson@library.ucla.edu>
• Subject:   Warning re: Viruses, bugs, worms, Trojan horses, etc.
• Message-ID:   SIMEON.10307191159.N@BIO-S-HIS301.library.ucla.edu

STHC-Lers:

I am forwarding (below) a nicely-worded warning from the moderator of 
another listserv (EXLIBRIS, for discussions about rare books) which 
pertains equally to STHC-L.  "ListProc" is the name of the software 
which operates our discussion list; it and our network administrators 
do a good job of keeping annoying and/or harmful Spam off the list (as 
the list administrator, I log several Spam attempts to STHC-L each day; 
another list I administer is now up to more than 2 dozen foiled 
attempts per day).

STHC-L is an unmoderated list, so anyone may subscribe and then post 
without  being filtered or otherwise edited.  One must be subscribed to 
the list to post a message, so Spam attempts to our address are 
generally rebuffed as "Sender not subscribed".  As we saw last week, 
however, someone subscribed, sent a virus-infected message, and 
unsubscribed.  I don't know if this was done automatically by a 
ListProc client-hunting spider or by a malicious individual (it may 
have looked like it came from me, but my online address book does not 
contain the list email address).
 
Nevertheless, I am going to reset the list profile (once I find the ol' 
instruction manual!) so I will preview all subscription attempts and 
confirm or deny each one.  The decision to deny a subscription will be 
based only on the suspicious nature of the subscriber's email address.  
The content of the list will continue to be unmoderated -- subscribers 
will continue to post directly to the list without first sending each 
posting to me for an "okie doke".

Russell Johnson
STHC-L administrator


--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 21:38:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Everett Wilkie [EWilkie@ix.netcom.com]
Subject: MODERATOR--Viruses, bugs, worms, Trojan horses, etc.
Sender: exlibris@library.berkeley.edu

Exlibris continues to be hammered by various Internet problems such as
viruses.  Thus far, Listproc has done a superb job of stripping all of them
off and then rejecting the message itself, for which the people at Berkeley
deserve our thanks.  Some people with Exlibris in their address books have,
however, managed to infect their computers, so infected messages are being
sent that appear to come from Exlibris.  I would like to urge you never to
open a message from Exlibris with an attachment; *never* open the attachment
even if you do open the message.  Neither the message nor its attachment is
a genuine Exlibris message; it just appears to be from Exlibris.

Everett Wilkie
Exlibris Moderator

--- End Forwarded Message ---