WARNING: Virus from "Carolina Birds"

[K Dean EDWARDS <kde@angst.engr.utk.edu>]

Sorry for more posts of a non-avian variety but thought I should
warn everyone about a virus I received disguised as returned,
undeliverable mail from the Carolina Birds listserv owner.


The mail was received Thursday evening and I found it this morning.
The subject line was

> Undeliverable mail--"Trademarks"

which immediately raised concerns as I had not sent any such
email.  The "sender" was listed as postmaster@angst.engr.utk.edu.
'angst.engr.utk.edu' is the machine I use for email but the
'postmaster' part is NOT how undeliverable mail is handled.

I check my email on a Linux machine which is immune to Windows
viruses so I decided to investigate.   Sure enough, the message
contained an attachment titled 'album.bat', almost certainly a
virus.  The text of the message was as follows:

> The following mail can't be sent to carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu:
>
> From: kde@angst.engr.utk.edu
> To: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
> Subject: Trademarks
>
> The attachment is the original mail

However, if you look at the actual sending entity, it was disguied
as 'carolinabirds-owner@verizon.net' which we should all know as
being wrong.

Someone is trying to be clever so watch out.


Dean Edwards
Knoxville, TN
kde@utk.edu