Yahoo Message Prank??
 

Twice now I've gotten a message from some unknown on yahoo. I happened to be sitting at my computer but not doing anything with it at the moment this morning when I got an odd message. It said

"hehe check this out http://funny.ccnportal.com/britney.exe"

I then saw it open my friends list, copy it and promptly sent the message to all those on my friends list.

What is this and how can I stop it??

I'm guessing it's a mini program in the message itself but apparently Norton Antivirus wasn't able to stop it. How do you protect against this sort of thing? And do you think it caused more damage than to send itself on? I never clicked on the link. The moment it popped up is when it sent itself.

Well, it definitely IS a virus. There is an AIM version of this which sends out a link to go to a website, which uses the IE security vulnerabilities to download the file "funny.jpg.exe"

Restart your computer in SAFE mode (hit F8 during booting), and run Norton during that time. Also run Spybot and AdAware to completely clean your computer.

Evens happens to MSN. You should tell your friends not to open that crap

there is another one going around yahoo messenger that is a geocities link, when you click on the link, it takes you to what appears to be a login page for yahoo, when you enter your username and password, it just reopens the login screen...but it also steals your info, and then later you find your password to your yahoo account changed as well as your email address that you gave when you signed up for yahoo. Fortunately they don't bother to change your secret question, so I was able to regain control of my account.

This isn't spyware, it's a virus, but running Trendmicro's housecall and Spyweeper (just to be safe) will get rid of it.

http://www.jayloden.com/

http://www.jayloden.com/aimfix.exe

Jay has AIMFIX.EXE which he updates and this kills AIM viruses. NAV and McAfee wouldn't fix it, spybot & adaware and Msoft antispyware wouldn't either.

Use Mozilla Firefox as well. I have a very secure system, virus and spyware-wise (As I have Ad-Aware, Spybot, SpywareBlaster, Microsoft AntiSpyware, Norton Antivirus) so I wanted to test it. One of my friends had the AIM virus so I got an instant message with only "Check out these great pics from my trip! http://www.genericpicturesite.com/trip/fun.jpg". I opened it up and a popup appeared from Firefox "The website is trying to install "funpictures.jpg.exe" do you wish to install?"
Of course, I selected no and moved along.
Jackasses write viruses and computer illiterates spread them through the web.

Thanks guys.

What I don't understand about this particular instance is that I did NOT click on the link. I didn't recognize the name of the person who had sent it and my friends would not send a link without first telling me what it was.

HOW do you stop something like this when it isn't dependant on what browser your use or whether you open it. My computer is bluescreening on me now on bootup. I cleaned it with Trendmicro's Housecall. Deleted 3 viruses. The next time we went to boot up the computer it stalled and gave me the dreaded blue screen. Hubby had uses AdAware on our computers as well as Norton Antivirus. How much more secure can you get about this?

Having a firewall that prevents the installation of anything without approval is the best protection.

Also run as a user that doesn't have install privileges and the file will be a dud.

A tip I always do is if a friend wants me to open an .exe file, I ask them a question that only they would know to make sure that its really them sending me the file, and that they know that they are in fact sending a file.

Just one of those preventative measures that a bot can't get past. :)