Klez virus- WHEN IS THING GOING TO FUCKING DIE OFF?!!

The BBQ Pit
1

We’ve seen the Melissa virus. It came and went.
We’ve seen the Sircam virus. It came and went.
We’ve seen the Nimda virus. It came and went.
We’ve seen the Code Blue virus. It came and went.
We’ve seen the Klez virus. It came and…

IT’S STILL FUCKING HERE!!!

Most viruses, it seems, go through a relatively short life cycle. It all starts when some assclown who can’t seem to find anything better to do with his two hands writes a virus and puts it out on the Internet. A few unsuspecting victims are caught off guard, the media puts out a notice, the folks at Norton, McAfee, etc. update their virus definitions and then everyone who keeps their anti-virus software up to date is protected while a strain of virus-laden emails circulate the Internet, needlessly occupying bandwidth. After such activity peaks over a few weeks’ time, such viruses tend to die off and are hardly seen again.

WHY THE FUCK HASN’T THIS HAPPENED YET WITH THE GODDAMN KLEZ VIRUS?!!!

My Norton antivirus does a good job keeping this shit out of my email, but goddammit, it still pisses me off that several months later I am STILL seeing Klez-infected emails coming to me. Just today I have received TEN such emails! This is a record. I am bound to get a few more at the rate things are going before the night is through.

I have tried to set up Outlook to filter out known Klez subject lines (“a nice game”, “a very funny website”, etc.), but it’s about as impossible as trying to reliably filter out spam via subject headers (hell, I’d almost rather receive spam than all this Klez shit!). I am sick, SICK, SICK– fucking SICK!!! of hearing my email alert sounding, only to find out that it’s another fucking Klez email! I can’t even get excited over hearing the alert anymore because 9 times out of 10, if it isn’t a spam, then it’s probably a Klez email. :rolleyes:

Are they just picking on me, or is everyone else still having to contend with this Klez virus? Personally, I’d like to find the asshole who started this virus and hang him by his nuts. I’m sure he already has his own circle in hell reserved for him.

2

I would ask why Hotmail and Yahoo seem helpless to stop them from polluting my Inbox, but I wouldn’t like the answer, would I?

I like PrimalRage mail. When it receives a virus, it sends back in return from 1 to 1000 MB of junk mail, filling the sender’s account, and often preventing them from sending mail - including the auto-sent viruses. Of course, it can get you into trouble…

3

Oh, shit. I’ll take the obvious answer for a thousand, Alex.

Is it, “when the last fool dies?”

4

Hey, does anyone know the secret to the Yahoo spamguard filter? They do a pretty damn good job, I’d like to apply it to my REAL mail (since my Yahoo address is not really my real serious mail).

5

I think that we may finally have so many computers around that stuff like this will stay around indefinately. I think a major factor is people installing stuff and not applying patches, then re-installing (w/o patches again) if it breaks.

This would explain the amazing repetition of lines with “…/winnt/system32/cmd.exe?” in my web server log file. Each of these represents an infected machine trying to spread the (MS IIS only) joy. As soon as someone installs a generic W2K box, they’re prime targets to continue the trend.

6

I get at least one of these emails a day, usually more like 5 or 6. It’s not the virus part that bothers me (I have a Mac, it’s can’t possibly harm me) it’s the damn file size of the typical KLEZ email. 130 Kb, usually. I’m on a slow connection (33.6 most days) and downloading all these virus-laden emails EVERY time I pick up my mail is tiresome.

And it keeps on getting worse. You’re right—more and more each time. I want it to STOP.

7

Is it not possible to set a filter to ban e-mails within a certain file-size range?

8

Your statements are contradictory. Something that makes Klez harmful to all users, as the OP noted and yourself noted, is the fact that it can quickly fill your mail with shit, and eat up your download time.

It was one of its purposes. It is harming you (electronically), regardless, even though you have a Mac.

I simply don’t accept any files or mails larger than 5k without prior notice I am receiving them.

9

I try to explain about e-mail virueses to my elderly parents.

Then, they say– “We won’t buy any viruses.”

I say–“Mom, Dad…viruses aren’t things you buy, they arrive unasked for in e-mail. Don’t open anything from people you don’t know, or above a certain size.”

Dad says–" I’LL OPEN WHAT I PLEASE! AND DON’T TALK TO YOUR MOTHER THAT WAY!"

Mom–“Don’t upset your father. And we won’t open anything marked virus.”

Patience doesnt help. I’m only their son. Obviously I could possibly know anything.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :frowning:

10

I meant “couldn’t know anything”.

Feeling old…

11

You probably know this, but for those who don’t… The sender listed on Klez emails is not the person who’s computer is infected. Along with randomly picking your email address to send to, it also uses a random email as the sender’s address. Unfortunately, this can make it tricky to track down the actual source of the infection.

12

I know this is going to be a stupid question to those of you in-the-know about such things, but humor me for the sake of my computer please.
When I get the stupid email, “a fun game,” for example, is it enough to just open the email to start problems? Does it have an attachment I would have to open to infect my computer?
If I am infected, will I be able to repair using something simple like Norton or is this something more serious?
Thanks in advance.
– Res, possible unwitting virus infector!

13

I must get four of them a day. FOUR. Drives me nuts. I’m safe as far as “catching” it goes, but it’s a damned nuisance.

14

That is one of the funniest things I’ve read lately.

Unfortunately, its almost certainly true… I could see the same thing happening to me!

15

Rez: It actually depends on your system and if you’ve updated or not. Some versions of outlook express will automatically run the KLEZ virus, which is why it hit so many people. Even people that know not to run attachments got hit by it.

To prevent from automatically running the virus, you should go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and run all the critical updates. Actually, anyone who doesn’t know about this site should go there and update your windows OS, as it closes most holes that viruses use to spread. Once you run the updates, you can use Norton Antivirus to reliably take out KLEZ and then you shouldn’t get re-infected unless you actually run the attachment yourself.

John

16

The senders could at least have more convincing message title lines instead of “Here’s that information you wanted39756942”

17
      • It’s probably me… I tried Norton and McAfee once, and neither worked. …Well, they both would make the PC run slower and slower until it would inevitably hang or crash—so I guess that was stopping me from getting any viruses. Nobody will give refunds for non-functional software anymore, so I gave up, and go without anti-virus software. I run ZoneAlarm, keep the OS updated and don’t store email addresses in any of the browser address books, but that’s all. Viruses are a network problem, and I am not the network. The network is who I write the check to every month; it’s really their problem. Let them figure out how to stop this shit.
        ~
        …-If they gave me anti-virus software to run, I would. However, I will no longer pay for it myself, from anyone.
18

Most variants of the klez worm attach a random file from the infected computer when they mail themselves out. Back in April I started collecting the JPG files that came with the klez e-mails that I got, and I’ve got 360 of them now. I estimate that I’ve gotten at least twice that many klez e-mails, since most of them have other file types attached to them. That means I’ve been getting an average of at least 6 a day, and probably more, for the last 4 months, with no sign of it slowing down.

I really don’t understand why Yahoo won’t let me filter out messages above a certain size, because it not only stops certain viruses, it would also save a lot of storage space on their servers.

19

I do email (and phone) support for an ISP with about 20,000 customers.

Before we had antivirus filters on the mail servers, I would have to deal with the Klez virus at least 100+ times in a 7 hour shift. Every time a Klez-infected virus came in, I’d have to click “Quarantine” then “Finish” and then it’d move on to the next email. Downloading the support mail in the morning would take about 45 minutes on a T1 because of this.

Now with the AV filters on the mail servers we just get an email notification saying “Notice! Your ISP has detected the Klez virus in an email sent to you from address”. Much easier to deal with than quarantining the virus every fucking ten minutes.

Don’t even get me started about the customer that has had the Sircam virus for the past 6 months…

20

For those in the know, I have another question regarding Klez. I was infected about 3 weeks ago. After asking for advice on this board, I went to antivirus.com and ran their virus software. It worked pretty well, however when I go through the registry, I still see instances of it hanging around. And the best part is that I can’t delete these keys!

Can someone out there explain to me how I can scrub this bastard program from my system once and for all?