August 22, 2003 Information Security Advisory

All,

I have been receiving phone calls and emails about the recent onslaught of computer viruses, 
and, more specifically, about the SoBig virus. Many of you had received my warning sent out 
May 20, 2003 which invited you to download the latest antivirus signatures and to scan your 
drive(s).
I have received reports of people getting as many as 150 infected emails. When you 
download emails if your computer tells you that you are receiving infected attachments, it 
means that your antivirus software is doing its job and, hopefully, invites you to quarantine 
or delete the email/infected file.
Make sure you do not open the attachment and immediately delete the message. I also invite you 
to permanently delete your deleted emails by emptying your deleted emails folder. You can do
this by right clicking on the folder and delete the emails, or open the deleted emails folder, 
select all emails and delete them.

One more thing: if you receive emails from postmasters and other email servers claiming that 
you are sending infected emails, it is probably not true: infected computers that have your 
email address in their outlook address book are sending infected messages out to their address 
book and the virus is spoofing the "from" field and substituting the address of the infected 
computer with yours.

Finally, please make sure you load up the latest Windows Updates as well. More recent worms 
exploit OS, IE 6.x and even Windows Media Player vulnerabilities.

Happy safe computing!

Frederic Martin
www.workingarts.com

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