Re: Fwd: Internet Security Update

[Brad Knowles <brad.knowles () skynet be>]

At 9:51 AM +1300 2003/04/09, Nick FitzGerald wrote:

>  What did you search for???

	Various strings that appeared in the message, including "April 
2003, Cumulative Patch", "Microsoft Product Support Services", 
"goregwiz.asp", etc....

>  Note the obvious (to native English speakers) grammatical error
>  common to folk who learnt English as a second language who often
>  struggle with articles?

	This is irrelevant.  It was pretty obvious that this was not a 
real Microsoft security announcement.  No amount of your whipping a 
dead horse will convince me that this might possibly have been 
something that I was thinking of.

	My point was that this appeared to be the results of a virus or 
Trojan Horse that I had not previously heard of, that I had done 
reasonable searches using general-purpose search engines as well as 
the virus/Trojan Horse/hoax-specific engines provided by the 
anti-virus vendors, and was wondering if anyone else had any other 
information.

>  Googling for the phrase "this is the latest version of security
>  update" turned up about 780 hits, the first ten of which were all
>  antivirus developer virus descriptions or various security company or
>  security service teams' warnings about the (then) new Gibe.B virus.

	That is not one of the phrases that I happened to Google for.  I 
searched on what I considered to be the obvious phrases, and did not 
get any hits.

>  Finally, isn't it illegal in Belgium to spread viruses?  I hope any
>  members of your local constabulary on this list take a lenient view
>  of your including what you clearly thought was a suspicious
>  attachment (and is, in fact, a virus) in your post to many thousands
>  of people...

	Ahh, okay.  So being an asshole is a European thing, and not just 
restricted to the Belgians.

--
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles () skynet be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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