MSN messenger virus

[Eeyore]

I've had some oddball behaviour from MSN Messenger recently.

Notably the text entry box greying out out and a message appearing
saying "you have logged in on another machine" or similar. Close that
box and sign in again.

Also you may get an email to your hotmail address like this ....

xxx106 invited you to check who has deleted or blocked you from their
contact list on MSN.
http://www.gomessenger.net/?h7428&[email protected] Thanks,
GoMessenger Team___This mail is sent by [email protected] using
GoMessenger

Click on the link and it's a password harvester.
http://www.gomessenger.net/g/
Needless to say I didn't do it.
This is a bit of a give-away "This site not modify your nickname TRY
NOW!! IT'S FREE!!"

A company called 4khosting seems to be involved in this somewhere.
Haven't dug down deep enough yet.

Just don't do it.

If you've been infected look for a file called xxxsvc.exe
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=en&hs=cc8&q="xxxsvc.exe"&btnG=Search

Graham

 

[Chris Whealy]

I've had some oddball behaviour from MSN Messenger recently.

Notably the text entry box greying out out and a message appearing saying "you have logged in on another machine" or similar. Close that box and sign in again.

Also you may get an email to your hotmail address like this ....

xxx106 invited you to check who has deleted or blocked you from their contact list on MSN.
http://www.gomessenger.net/?h7428&[email protected] Thanks,
GoMessenger Team___This mail is sent by [email protected] using GoMessenger

Click on the link and it's a password harvester.
http://www.gomessenger.net/g/
Needless to say I didn't do it.
This is a bit of a give-away "This site not modify your nickname TRY NOW!! IT'S FREE!!"

A company called 4khosting seems to be involved in this somewhere.
Haven't dug down deep enough yet.

Just don't do it.

If you've been infected look for a file called xxxsvc.exe
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=en&hs=cc8&q="xxxsvc.exe"&btnG=Search

Thanks for the heads-up.

Chris W

 

[Martin Riddle]

I've had some oddball behaviour from MSN Messenger recently.

Notably the text entry box greying out out and a message appearing
saying "you have logged in on another machine" or similar. Close that
box and sign in again.

Also you may get an email to your hotmail address like this ....

xxx106 invited you to check who has deleted or blocked you from their
contact list on MSN.
http://www.gomessenger.net/?h7428&[email protected] Thanks,
GoMessenger Team___This mail is sent by [email protected] using
GoMessenger

Click on the link and it's a password harvester.
http://www.gomessenger.net/g/
Needless to say I didn't do it.
This is a bit of a give-away "This site not modify your nickname TRY
NOW!! IT'S FREE!!"

A company called 4khosting seems to be involved in this somewhere.
Haven't dug down deep enough yet.

Just don't do it.

If you've been infected look for a file called xxxsvc.exe
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=en&hs=cc8&q="xxxsvc.exe"&btnG=Search

Graham

There is a web based MS messenger. I don’t think you'd have a problem
with that.

Cheers

 

[Eeyore]

There is a web based MS messenger. I don’t think you'd have a problem
with that.

I've changed my password as a safety precaution anyway. No more "logged in on another
machine" messages so far.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Anything from the A/V websites?

Mine passes clean with AVG and a manual search for xxxsvc.exe yielded no result either
nor was it in msconfig ( or startupCPL as I like to use) .

I think I might have been entrapped by a genuine looking MSN message to re-login which
would have given the harvesters my password and explain why I got the 'you are logged in
another machine' messages a few times. That's why I changed my password.

I did a quick and dirty check on some of this and I reckon I've more than half an idea
what's going on but I haven't traced it far back enough in detail yet. 4khosting is
definitely complicit. If I have the time I'll report further.

Please pass the message around and if you've had any of this odd behaviour or messages
that suggest you've been deleted as an MSN contact, also send this contact this info at
whatever level of complexity you think they'll 'get' and I suggest you change your
password now. Which is actually quite complex now - you have to click on the 'lost
password' link yet be logged in to recieve the instructions.

This could be an attempt to create a new vast 'botnet'.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Your problem is failing that MSN itself is a virus to a certain
degree, and its "messenger" is like removing the side of your house and
posting a sign "burglers welcome".

But it's useful. Very useful in fact.

About time someone other than M$ made an OS that's secure and does everything other
that you want.

Yes, I've played briefly with Linux. Enough to discover their fans are retards.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Even better, use your ISP's webmail EXCLUSIVELY.

It's not MAIL I use it for primarily.

Graham

 

[philicorda]

Robert Baer wrote:


But it's useful. Very useful in fact.

About time someone other than M$ made an OS that's secure and does
everything other that you want.

Yes, I've played briefly with Linux. Enough to discover their fans are
retards.

Graham

Well, if you don't like Linux, and are sick of babysitting Windows, then
the BSDs call.

OpenBSD is secure. FreeBSD is a good desktop/server OS. PCBSD is more
desktop oriented and user friendly.

Any of those three would make a good Windows replacement for internet
related tasks.

 

[Jamie]

Robert Baer wrote:




But it's useful. Very useful in fact.

About time someone other than M$ made an OS that's secure and does everything other
that you want.

Yes, I've played briefly with Linux. Enough to discover their fans are retards.

Graham

MAC ?

http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5"

 

[Nobody]

Yes, I've played briefly with Linux. Enough to discover their fans are
retards.

The phenomenon isn't restricted to Linux; remember, "fan" is just short
for "fanatic".

 

[Eeyore]

Well, if you don't like Linux, and are sick of babysitting Windows, then
the BSDs call.

Well I liked Linux perfectly well aside from the fact that Ubuntu wouldn't
install on the advertised 256M of RAM ( 512M sorted that ).

Tell that to a Linux group and they'll savage you rather than welcome you into
their fold though and tell you it's all your fault ( despite the fact I first
started writing sofware 38 years ago and used the world's first laptop ).
Mention that *some* Windows programs are OK and it gets even worse. The Linux
fans are killing the OS through their elitist attitude.

OpenBSD is secure. FreeBSD is a good desktop/server OS. PCBSD is more
desktop oriented and user friendly.

Any of those three would make a good Windows replacement for internet
related tasks.

I have no knowledge of it at all. Can you clue me in ?

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

MAC ?

Waste of time in the UK. Expensive, dreadful support, few dealers and the few 'MAC
experts' I've come across have a level of knowledge that would cause me to fire them in
the PC environment.

I have used, and serviced MACs though for video and film editing ( Avid ). I even have an
Avid 400 tech course certificate. But now it's really just Unix anyway with a MAC face.
Why not Linux in the first place ?

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Brian L McCarty wrote:

CRAP.

Ignore this imposter who chooses to stalk the real Robert Morein all over Usenet.

One key to his posts are that they're stupid. The other for those who can read
headers is that they emanate from buzzard news who seem to be a tiny 'pro-abuse'
outfit.

Anyone fancy going round there and putting a few slugs through them or their servers
?

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Even better, use your ISP's webmail EXCLUSIVELY.

Oh and aside from a couple of ex-ISPs who kept my accounts live as dial-up only I
don't use an ISP for my mail except for the outgoing server. I have my own domain for
the serious stuff.

Graham

 

[philicorda]

Well I liked Linux perfectly well aside from the fact that Ubuntu
wouldn't install on the advertised 256M of RAM ( 512M sorted that ).

I don't think the live CD install will run in 512MB, but the text mode
installer should work.

Saying that, 1GB is really the realistic minimum for the default settings
in latest Ubuntu.

The biggest memory hog is the database for file indexing, which starts up
whenever it likes and can take around 400MB of real memory. Disable it.

Tell that to a Linux group and they'll savage you rather than welcome
you into their fold though and tell you it's all your fault ( despite
the fact I first started writing sofware 38 years ago and used the
world's first laptop ). Mention that *some* Windows programs are OK and
it gets even worse. The Linux fans are killing the OS through their
elitist attitude.

I think many Linux users start off acting as idiots on forums, and then
grow out of it eventually. I know I did. So perhaps you don't really
get a good picture of the community as a whole, just the beginners in
their first excitable flush of freedom.

A little hint.

If you ever really need to know how to do something in Linux, post to a
popular forum saying that Linux can't do it. Some people will go out of
their way to do hours of research to prove you wrong.

The more mature discussion is often found in a forum for an individual
application.

I have no knowledge of it at all. Can you clue me in ?

FreeBSD is a stable, mature operating system. Generally the applications
available will be the same as those in a typical Linux distro.

You don't really get distributions in the same way as Linux, though there
are a couple based on FreeBSD (PCBSD, DragonflyBSD). This makes it feel
more coherent and less fragmented than Linux.

The disadvantages are that hardware support is not as good as Linux,
there is not quite as many ported applications, and configuration can be
a bit cryptic at times for a beginner.

I've dabbled with FreeBSD on occasion, and often thought 'this is how I
really wanted Linux to be'. Unfortunately, my interests are in the open
source audio apps and real time operation, which is quite obscure even on
Linux.

OpenBSD is more about security. NetBSD is about portability and small
size. Neither are that user friendly as desktop operating systems.

Slackware Linux is a good compromise in some ways. It is the oldest
active Linux distro, mature, polished and simple like a BSD, but has good
hardware support and lots of ported apps. Not as user friendly as Ubuntu,
but in other ways much more so, as user friendliness generally means more
complexity and things to go wrong underneath the surface.

 

[Phil W]

Jamie wrote:
Not as secure as Linux...and they are now WIN machines
hardware-wise..

And where is the difference between "WIN machines" and "LINUX machines"
hardware-wise? I´d really like to know that!

 

[philicorda]

And where is the difference between "WIN machines" and "LINUX machines"
hardware-wise? IŽd really like to know that!

A Linux machine doesn't always have an x86 compatible processor. For
security by obscurity, other architectures are a good thing.

Other than that, they will often have a little penguin sticker on the
case.

 

[Eeyore]

Hopefully, you do not consider MSN software as an OS, because it ain't.

I find XP acceptable. but DOS could run along with an application on a 360K floppy.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

...What about the Next?

That was a LONG time ago. Looked cute though.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

And where is the difference between "WIN machines" and "LINUX machines"
hardware-wise? I´d really like to know that!

None AFAIK. I've had both OSs running on the same box.

Graham