Calling all techies - viral e-mail questions

[sybylla]

I am part owner of a computer controls firm so I have some knowledge of this but as a tech writer, I have to admit I don't know it all so I have a couple of questions.

Since 8am this morning I have received 25 (and they are still coming) viral emails with .scr or .pif attachments. The interesting part is that they are coming in on my local dem party address. I use this for all party correspondence and it gets published in the paper so I do get trash once in a while. But in 8 years of being connected to the internet, I have never received 25 of these in one day and they are nearly all duplicates of the same 3 or 4 viral e-mails with different phony senders, most of them dems or dem orgs, and a slight variation in the subject line.

Question 1: is it possible that this is coming from just one computer?

Question 2: is it possible that I am being targeted?

Question 3: Or is this just what happens when viral e-mails bounce around between friends in a dem group. That would mean that the e-mails have caught 25 of my acquaintances and my acquaintances' acquaintances so far - right?

I've sent out warnings to my entire list of dems and offered assistance to anyone suffering from quick fingers or exploder's "auto-open" feature.

Any other suggestions - help? My chief engineer is out of town and I could really use your answers and advise.

[Kellanved]

1. Most likely three

But neither one nor two are impossible.

[Liberal Veteran]

2. The answer to all your questions are "Yes"....

It is possible that one machine is doing this.
It is possible you are being targeted specifically.
It is possible that a few people are bouncing it amongst one another. (had to edit on re-reading).

I'd say it's probably just one infected person that the virus is co-opting the address book to mail virii to everyone in the address book over and over again.

[Kellanved]

7. Sobig brings its' own SMTP server

And if I understand the question correctly the "to" is the same in all mails, not the "from".

In any case: sobig fakes the sender field; it uses a few hardcoded addresses and all it can find on the infected machine to fill it.

[AnnabelLee]

3. Locking-Dupe

Please continue discussion here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=111421

[KC]

4. It is

the new virus/worm going around. You aren't the only one getting those emails

KC

[sybylla]

5. Thanks everyone

EarlG beat me to this with a thread on a huge number of viral e-mails spreading around today. I figured since it was only on my local dem party address that it was a local problem.

It does seem odd, though, that I'm not getting this on any of the five other e-mail addresses I monitor. Anyone know if they are talking about the same viral e-mail problems in freeperland?

[AntiCoup2K4]

6. When a worm hits a computer....

...first thing it does is to hit your address book and send itself to every addy it finds. Then it goes to each one of those computers and does the exact same thing (if not blocked). If you are also in the address book of all of those computers, you will also get a copy of the virus from each of them. The reason worms slow down a network is by the sheer volume of traffic they generate by merely mailing themselves.

Bottom line, if you are on a number of mailing lists and some of those lists have recipients in commmon, you will get a copy of the infected file from every single computer on that list which is not protected from the worm.