Someone on list with latest virus?

[Andrew L. Gould]

On Monday 22 September 2003 10:22 am, Kent Stewart wrote:
> On Monday 22 September 2003 08:10 am, vizion communication wrote:
> > I agree that a number of people on this list have been
> > affected by the virus and it is really helpful of you to
> > have posted to the list because those infected are sending
> > out huge volumes of emails to some of us on the list.
> >
> > I would recomend that everyone on this list checks their
> > system if it is vulnerable at the earliest opportunity and
> > remove the virus from their system. I am receiving over 100
> > emails a day from infected systems.
>
> I agree and I am seeing similar quanties of virus infected emails. Since
> they are arriving from sites around the world, they have to be people
> on the FreeBSD lists. You can't do anything else and write all of their
> ISPs.
>
> The problem seem to be that a large number of people are using unpatched
> versions of Windows emailers. The fix to prevent infection by something
> as simple as previewing an email was made available at Microsoft's
> Windows update site (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) in 2001.
>
> Anyone with an infected computer can find disinfection instructions and
> a "Recovery" program at
> http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/w32gibef.html
>
> Matthew's comment about the infection rate at Symmantec still seems to
> be appropriate. I have logged more than 20 sites and I am only doing 1
> in 30+ sampling.
>
> Kent
>
> > David

I do my emailing from FreeBSD; but I empathize with any Windows user's fear of 
patching/updating.  I updated my Win2K with a "critical update" yesterday 
using Microsoft's online updating utility (no, not from an email link!); and 
it trashed the OS. The repair utilities on the installation CD  have been 
useless.  I now have to find the time to reinstall.

I spent the night reviewing the list of apps I can't replace in FreeBSD.   The 
list keeps getting smaller (along with the motivation to reinstall).

Andrew Gould