With something of a lull on the List with the US Thanksgiving Day
holiday, this is probably as good a time as any to remind folks to
check their virus protection.

There is a new variant of the Sober worm that is making the rounds in a
big way. The particular hallmarks for this version are spoofed emails
from the FBI or CIA with (of course) an attachment. Some of the
antivirus companies were slow out of the blocks to update this one and
it is spreading quite rapidly. I've seen six or eight of them since
last night, which is a very high volume in a short period of time.

Please please please -- make sure you have an antivirus product (and
current virus definitions) installed on your PC. If you don't have one,
unplug your PC and put it back in the box it came in and return it to
the store where you bought it. The reason for your return will be "too
irresponsible to be connected to the Internet". I'm serious. You
shouldn't be connected to the Internet without having your PC up to
date and fully protected.

If other family members use your PC, please remind them that they
should never click on attachments or links that they aren't expecting,
regardless of where they supposedly originate. That also goes for
emails from financial institutions. The big thing with those emails now
(besides wanting you to hand over your account number and password) is
that the web page is loaded with code that will be downloaded to your
PC behind the scenes and infect it, if your Windows patches aren't up
to date and if your antivirus product isn't sophisticated enough to
scan all code that gets passed to your PC.

So in between football games and turkey, it's probably worth your while
to do a little maintenance on your home PCs and make sure that your
little corner of the Internet is safe.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pat Cunningham, CRM

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