hrdwareguy

OK, so this is more of a rant than anything but over the weekend our mailserver got hit with tons of german spam. A little digging and I came up with these articles:

http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000663.html

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120496,00.asp

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120682,00.asp

The spam is sent with the Sober.Q worm. In order to have Sober.Q on your computer, you had to have Sober.P, since Sober.P downloads Sober.Q.

The big boys all came out a couple weeks ago and said definitions needed to be updated.

When will people start updating their definitions on a regular basis. It's not hard, it can be automated. And whats the point of having a virus checker if you don't update your virus defs. And if it's not a free one, why let your subscription lapse....makes about as much sense as a condom with a pee hole in it.

< / end rant >

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superiorrain

I agree, i search for updates almost daily and touch wood i haven't had a problem yet.

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Dragonlich

...or you can use a program like Mailwasher/spamassassin to automatically filter out spam.

MontanaXVI

haha I have to agree with the updating it really truly is a painless effort, but the condom with a pee hole comment was just classic!@!

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n0nsensical

Another article

I was wondering why I was getting all that crap in German linking to Der Spiegel.

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soma

Heh. My dad was just telling me about how he was getting a crap load of german spam sent to his office email.

laconic1

That explains what the hell that was! I had about 13 German messages in my inbox this morning, and they all came from coworkers computers.

Slavakion

Or people can update their definitions so that they don't get infected and clog up the internet.

connyosis

Got a spam mail with the following contents yesterday:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!

I mean, I do hate spam, but there is no way I can be upset about a mail containing that message. It rocks.

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Dragonlich

Or people could try installing Windows updates, using a firewall and virusscanners, and not clicking on every single button that pops up.

...but that's probably just a fantasy.

Slavakion

Unfortunately... which is why they're trying to build virus protection into the hardware. People can't be trusted.

citrid

Hi Guys,

on Monday Sober.Q is prepared to reload and install new routines from the internet.

BTW: I'm from germany and not funny about all that is, that neo-fashists contents are tried to be spread through these mails, in order to disturb a local election in a german province ...

the mails are all about foreign people living "unrightious" here, stealing someones job or taking other advantage of our system .... bullshit ....


may sound funny to U.S. people ... but its true .... political spam from neo-nazis ...

MikeSty

Yeah, my mom's office got hit very hard by this too. It's everywhere!

Citrid, I feel sympathy for you guys in Germany the most :/ It's easy to say it's German spam, or spam from Germany, but that's a bit general. I assure you we don't find it funny here ... i don't find neo-nazism funny at all. Germany isn't to be blamed, it's the creeps that pulled this.

Not relating to neo-nazis, we have crooked politicians here ourselves. I know here in the Philadelphia area, we get a lot of TV commercials year-round. But it's like no one advertises for themselves anymore, or wants to say the good things. They are just sending bad messages about each other. It's weird!

Bratwurst

I blocked a quarter million emails at work in two days due to this.

I can't wait until monday.

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Grasshopper Green

So...you aren't necessarily sending spam if you get it, right? I got tons of this in only one of my accounts and did a virus scan immediately..just to be safe. Came up virus free.

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citrid

@MikeSty:

what u mean: u have tv comercials in philli ?
mean ... nazis on TV ?

ok .... when elections are up, we have comercials on TV for the differing legal parties ... any parties, even right-winged and extreme parties (like "DVU - Deutsche Volks-Union" or "NSAP - New Social-Alternative Party" which sounds like NSDAP of Adolf Hitler)

Normally they are more hidden here in Germany. They dont have official Forums on TV or Radio ... they appear out of the dark in the streets as Skin-Heads or out of the silence as Politicians on TV-Shows. Sad enough to have to say that some of them are sitting in the senats of some cities in germany.

Somehow more funny is, that these "structures" in germany are obviously connected. So in other cases "brown groups" (because of the brown uniforms of the Nazis) are trying to organize money through Spam or Porn.

First, they tried to connect themselves over the internet for false propaganda and exchange information in general, music or books. The next step they took was using the internet somehow different:

There have been articles around in Germany that behind many, many german Spam and Porn activities threre are Fashist/Nazi Groups to dig some money for their basic political work.

Ohhh man, there is still a lot of money to be earned ...... in Porn or Spam.
They made this now their Honeypod .....

Nothing surprising about that Spam with Nazi-Talk in ya thunderbird or outlook, he ?!

Greetz, Citrus