Newsgroup: it.news.gruppi
Titolo: Sarà vero, sarà falso?

Vi riporto il testo di un articolo diffuso il 7 Dic 1997 alle ore
11:30 AM dalla rivista americana NEWSBYTES, dal titolo:
Passwords rivelate e computers danneggiati attraverso e-mail.
****Passwords Detected, Computers Damaged Through E-Mail 12/05/97
DULLES, VIRGINIA, U.S.A., 1997 DEC 5 (NB) -- By Patrick McKenna,
Newsbytes. The latest and most sophisticated method of infecting
computers with viruses and stealing passwords may be sending e-mail
which appears to be from a reputable and well-known company. 
Receiving an e-mail with an attachment that results in damage or
access to computer files is not new. Called Trojan horses, they
appear to be a "gift," but actually cause problems. Deceptive
attachments first arrive as simple advertisements, jokes or
sex-related content such as photographs and World Wide Web sites. 
"As quickly as users become educated to these types of dangers, the
people creating them develop more complex methods to attract users,"
said America Online spokesperson Rich D'Amato. The latest ruse is to
appear as a trusted high-tech company offering promotional software
as an attachment to an e-mail. 
BPS Software, developer of a popular line of America Online add-on
tools, was used recently as a Trojan Horse for the newest form of a
attached mischief. An unknown number of America Online users
received e-mail from what appeared to be BPS. The message used the
company's image in an e-mail which included company logos and e-mail
addresses of employees and officials. The body of the letter offered
users a free promotional copy of BPS's well-known PowerTools. 
The message which appeared legitimate began: "Dear AOL Member,
Attached is a copy of the latest version of Power Tools, Power Tools
7.0. Power Tools 7.0 has been beta tested and brought to perfection
thanks to our BPS Staff members listed below. If you are not
familiar with Power Tools, then I will explain. Power Tools are an
add on for America Online versions 2.5, 3.0 16 and 32 bit that makes
many of AOL's features more enhanced." 
BPS spokesperson, Joni Tohr, told Newsbytes, "Once a user downloads
the attached file and executes it, he or she does not get BPS
PowerTools but a password sniffer which writes code to Windows .INI
file, changes AOL files to prevent access to changing password and
returns a password to the sender. We are really sorry this is
happening and we apologize to people who experience problems from
this, but there is not much we can do. The people doing this are
gone before anyone can trace them, sometimes within hours, but
during that time they can get hundreds of passwords." 
A note from BPS explains in more detail: "These executable files,
when download and installed (they must be installed to do their
dirty work), add a program to your computer that finds your password
in AOL's main.idx file and sends it to what is usually an Internet
address (something like 
hotmail.com
 or other such dubious servers).
AOL has done an admirable job of educating people not to download
EXE, COM or BAT files from strangers, but as you know, the e-mail
looks real! Unfortunately, at this time, the "hackers" have also
come up with executable macros that can be embedded in DOC files
(I've seen DOC, SHS, TXT, and others) which, when opened with MS
Word, will do the same thing." 
She also added, "These Trojan horses that appear as e-mail from a
reputable firm are not limited to BPS. They could use any company
name and the scheme can be used on any online service or Internet
connection." 
Tohr advises Internet users to never open an executable file. "We
have a policy here," she continued. "We don't send our programs to
anyone as an attached file. If you get something like that, you
should contact the company and verify they sent you their product at
an attached file." 
Reported by Newsbytes News Network: 
http://www.newsbytes.com
 
ĄHasta luego!
enzo...@iol.it

 
[snip]
Solo due commenti:
1) Mona chi lancia eseguibili provenienti chissa' da dove.
2) Evviva i messaggi in plain text senza ammenicoli vari. 
-- 
Andrea Vettori
------------------------
vet...@computer.org
http://www.dei.unipd.it/~vettori
    (italiano)
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/9236
   (english)


Solo UN commento...
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Grazie
Lello "Wolverine" Sarti
ICQ - N. 1 Number UIN: 2972012
e-mail: 
le...@tn.village.it
 
 
wolveri...@hotmail.com
        Powwow:  
wo...@rine.it
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 Word, will do the same thing." 
Word: l'unico Wordprocessor che sparge virus...
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