Remember painstakingly explaining to people that no, your computer couldn’t get a virus just by reading an email, you had to click on an attachment? That images were safe to open? Remember when the worst people had to worry about from web pages was unwanted cookies? Getting a virus just from looking at a web page? Preposterous! And a virus that ran up your credit card? Ridiculous!

It’s sad to think that all those “ridiculous” things are now possible—in fact, they’re commonplace. Look back at that link up there. It’s Snopes’ page on computer virus warnings. Way back when, they were all bogus. These days, most of them are real.

So what’s next? Well, they keep talking about Internet-aware appliances, so a future virus probably could “recalibrate your refrigerator’s coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty.”

Oddly, Symantec’s entry says nothing about the speech. Maybe they don’t have speakers on their test boxes.

You may have heard a few days ago that the latest MyDoom variant includes a request for work in the antivirus industry.

Well, the comic strip User Friendly has come up with the perfect solution!

The TechWeb Spin: All spam is true! (Fredric Paul, Internet Week, June 29, 2004): Yes, you read it here: it’s all true! The author explains about all the money he’s gotten from deposed Nigerian dictators, the software discounts, the combined advantages of certain pharmaceuticals and dating services, and more!

It’s true, I read it on the Net! (author unknown): I remember seeing this way back when, under the title “The Ultimate Chain Letter.” It’s kind of like the parody of the Good Times Virus (remember that one?) in that it combines everything. All the urban legends about stolen kidneys, rats at KFC, needles in pay phones, and satanic business leaders. All the email hoaxes about Bill Gates giving you money and dying kids asking for email. All the typical chain letter threats about not breaking the chain.

Spam is out of this world (Adam Turner, Syndey Morning Herald, April 1, 2004): An April Fools’ piece about the Mars Spirit rover being crippled by spam traffic: “The rover’s limited onboard artificial intelligence was foolish enough to apply for an shonky online marketing diploma. Soon after offers of cheap WD40 and antenna enlargements began clogging the link between Mars and NASA’s Deep Space Network.” It goes on to explain that Beagle was taken down by a Martian Nigerian scam.

Welcome to Spam University: a parody of a school site with ridiculously low entry requirements (At least four years of elementary school, No more than three felony convictions), course descriptions (Harvesting Addresses, Covering Your Tracks, Spamming Ethics – Canceled), alumni testimonials and more!

Every once in a while, you’ll see something weird.

Today I received what looked like a classic credit-card theft scam: a notice supposedly from PayPal claiming that my account would be canceled unless I re-entered all my credit card information into the linked web page. Right. Normally I just report it to PayPal and delete it, but this one had an attachment instead of a link, and that attachment had been defanged. With a name like www.paypal.com.scr, it was pretty obviously a virus. (The .scr extension, normally used for screen savers on Windows, is often used by viruses because it will be run just like any other program, but it’s less obvious than naming it .exe.)

The really odd part was that it was sent to an address I only use on eBay and PayPal, and they make it really difficult to pick up email addresses these days. I realized that only two groups of people would have that address: people who really did work for eBay or PayPal, or people whom I had recently bought from or sold to on eBay.

A quick search through my email history, and I found two messages sent from the same IP address, both from a seller I had bought from last month.

By the time I got around to searching, two things had happened: I had received two more copies from the same source, and Symantec had posted a description of what they were calling W32.Paylap@mm [ed: W32.Mimail.I@mm]. I sent a note to the seller about the virus, suggesting also that he contact his credit card company if he actually filled out the form.

With luck, he’ll catch it before any financial damage is added to the infected computer.

The return address on a virus like Sobig doesn’t mean crap.

So why the heck are all these idiotic virus scanners sending me messages saying “You sent us a virus!” when a cursory glance at the headers clearly shows that it originated on the other side of the planet?

I’ve already got the server filtering out the virus itself – I’m seriously thinking about filtering out the useless warnings.