Had Your Dose of Klez Today? I HOPE Not!

Golfgar4 · Sep 26, 2002

WOW! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif We just got through fixing our computer after getting hit with the Klez(sp?)virus! All you computer Guru's out there probably know all about this thing, but this hacker (hey, that's a golf term too! /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif) didn't know a thing about it, and obviously didn't know that our computer wasn't protected! /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif

Last week, around Wednesday, my wife says that a really strange thing happened. She got a reply from one of our friends that her message she sent was not deliverable. /w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif Well, I sent this guy an e-mail the day before, but how come the reply came to her e-mail address rather than mine? Maybe we'll get do some Sherlock Holming!! /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif Nothing like a good mystery!

The next day, I get home from work and the wife says that she's getting all these e-mails from someone called MAILER-DAEMON. I ask her how many she received. She says 95 and they're still coming! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Oh, Oh! No more Sherlock Holming! The jig is up. We been VIRUSED!!

So we start talking about what we should do. I tell her that I'm going to hide out for awhile, 'cause yesterday I sent an e-mail with attachments to every Church Council member, both PAstors, and the church secretary. I've probably infected every last one of them. /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif O.K. So I'll talk with the guys in IT tomorrow and get some guidance (hopefully the FREE kind! /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif)

Well, I can't get a hold of any of them, so I figure I'll swing by the Office Max and look at some of the anti-virus software. On the way, I have to drop off some furniture at a local lawn & garden center that had been borrowed for the Parade of Homes. Well, well, one of the fellows I sent the e-mails to is working there part-time. He sees me walking in, and when he sees me he gets this look in his eyes like a bull seeing the red cape! after I calm him down a little, I expalin that I got infected too, and I didn't know that it had happened until after I'd sent the e-mail. Well, I sure am glad he believes in turning the other cheek, cause he did as he stomped away from me! /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif/w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif

So, I find out later that evening that sure enough, everybody I sent the e-mail to has gotten infected. I'm feeling pretty low about it when it finally dawns on me! These people are no smarter than me, cause they didn't keep their virus protection up to date either!! /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif Wow, I feel a whole lot better now.....well, as better as I could feel with my computer infected.

On Saturday I go and pick-up Norton SystemWorks and come home to start the process of cleaning things up. I run the disk like the manual says, without downloading the software, and it runs for 7 hours!! At the end, it says it didn't find any viruses!! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif I DON'T THINK SO!! So, I call the tech. support number. This guys answers and I explain t my problem. he asks me if I've registered. I say no, I can't register until I load in the software, and I can't load the software because it'll get infected. He says, "Then I can't help you. If you're not registered, I can't do anything for you." /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif/w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif I say, no you don't understand, I WANT to pay you guys money, but I don't want to corrupt your software. He says Sorry, and hangs up! /w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif/w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif/w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif

So I say the H_ _ _ with it and load in the software. Once that's done, I go out to their website and download all of their updates, which downloaded successfully - according to their software. Now I go to run the virus check, and a message pops up telling me that there is no virus software, and oh, by the way, the rest of the Norton software is corrupted! Have A Nice Day! I said F _ _ _ this S _ _ _ and went and played golf!

The next day, my wife tells me she went to the Norton website and found a FREE download that would find viruses and tell you how to get rid of them. She downloaded it, and found that we had 78 files infected. She cleaned the files, downloaded the Norton Software again, and voila - it all works! /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif/w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif/w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif/w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif

I'm going to play MORE golf!! /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

njrqs · Sep 26, 2002

Gazza

Thet Klez virus has been hanging around for sooooooo long now.

I use Norton and it picks up a message from someone I don't know at least once a week now and has done so for months.

A real pain.

Go the golf !!!!!!

Alan L. · Sep 26, 2002

Klez is a bad boy. Our mailserver at work is picking up 10 or 12 a day. It managed to infect McAfee on my home laptop while it was up to date and running. I downloaded a Klez fixit utility and finally corrected the problem.

Klez is one of those viruses you can get without even opening an attachment.

Dob · Sep 26, 2002

Yutz! I get an average of 3 a day, klez's that is.
Between zonealarm & mcafee, no penetration... yet.

cstocks · Sep 27, 2002

I had Norton Antivirus several years ago... until a virus designed to attach itself to Norton bit me. Cleaned out the virus and uninstalled Norton after that.

I currently have McAfee but it is always disabled because it makes my computer crash. Lot of good that does me, huh? Fortuately my ISP has virus protection and I have not picked up any cockydoody viruses in a while. My ISP virus protection has caught a few in the past year so I guess it works pretty good.

Good thing you have a clever wife to exorsize those Daemons out of your computer!/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Hank · Sep 27, 2002

Our mailserver at work is picking up 10 or 12 a day

Consider yourself lucky! Not counting the ones I am blocking because the domain or IP address is a known offender, our email server is receiving hundreds of Klez messages a day.

Almost all of these are coming into our "generic" email boxes, such as webmaster@mentalhealth.org, or info@health.org, ones like those. Each of those boxes is receiving dozens a day. It is not unusual for me to observe the size of one of those boxes at 20-30MB early in the morning, before the staff gets here and downloads them.

As a result, we are in the process of taking those boxes off line entirely, substituting a web-based email form instead.

Our Norton Corp. Edition handles the Klez's just fine, but they sure are a nuisance.

Egon · Sep 27, 2002

We had that lovely little program appear also. A call to our server gave us the access to a free download to eliminate the virus. Fortunetly only a few files were destroyed. We now have Norton installed with auto updates.
Egon

Golfgar4 · Sep 27, 2002

"Good thing you have a clever wife to exorsize those Daemons out of your computer!"

You're right, Chris. If she weren't so clever, I'd would've missed at LEAST 2 rounds of golf! /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

So far the Norton anti virus we downloaded seems to be catching everything. We also have the auto update service. I sure hope Norton can keep up with all these goofy things that are being sent.

I didn't even know the ISP could have a level of protection. I'll have to contact them and see why theirs didn't pick it up. Thanks for the tip. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Alan L. · Sep 27, 2002

We use Norton Corp Edition, but unfortunately we don't use Microsoft Exchange, but rather Mailsite by Rockliffe. NCE won't work for Mailsite, although it protects the regular fileserver and the mailserver itself. With Mailsite, it has an F-Secure engine that seems to catch the Klez's now, but was having trouble until I upgraded a couple of times. It updates the definitions hourly. So far, so good.

If these people are smart enough to create the viruses and a way to infect systems, they should be smart enough to do something useful instead.

Hank · Sep 28, 2002

If these people are smart enough to create the viruses and a way to infect systems, they should be smart enough to do something useful instead.

I couldn't agree more. I see them as sort of cyber-vandals, like the kids who would key your car just because it's there.

Oh well, it gives me something (else) to do. I actually derive a subtle pleasure from blocking out entire blocks of IP numbers, so they cannot send mail to us (more the spammers than the virus folks, but there is little difference between the two in my mind).