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Welcome to the Viruswarning forums. All your original content has been ported to the new forums as well as new content and additional opportunities to interact with the authors of Viruswarn.com. You can always access old content at www.leedrake.com/forum . You may find some formatting was lost in the conversion and the older versions of the posts to be more readable....
But at least it's all here.
Enjoy!
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Viruswarn Forums
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Lee Drake
Posts:238
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| 10/18/2002 8:41 PM |
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What Is It?
Suddenly, you're working on your computer and up pops a dialog box with spam in it. You might not even have been browsing ON the internet! You may think your computer has a virus, or been hacked, or something worse.
Mostly though - it's an annoyance. It turns out that everyone has, built into their system, a service called the Windows Message service. This is not the much maligned Windows Messenger software (the one with the cute little picture of two pawns in your message bar which you can't seem to get rid of) which is for instant messaging between friends. The Windows Message service (confusingly called "Messenger" in the windows Services list) allows administrators to send you a pop-up message that a server is going down, that a printer is out of paper, or that you should log off. It's usually used by admins on a network, and occasionally by remote print drivers to send information back to a client. Unless your network administrator insists you leave it on - there's really no need for it to be active.
Unfortunately the spammers figured out that they can send you spam by using the NET SEND command to send a windows message service message to your desktop. You'll get a pop-up message on your desktop with their spam in it. You can only press "OK" and dismiss the message, there's no way to embed a link, - but a clever programmer could make it pop up again.... and again.... and again. It's annoying - but not particularly dangerous as far as anyone knows. Now why in the world people think that you'd BUY something from someone who does that is sort of beyond me, but I guess some people must because otherwise there'd be no money in it...
Fortunately a good firewall (either an external hardware one, or an internal one like ZoneAlarm) will prevent you from getting these messages. As always we highly recommend you have one or the other of these types of firewalls, particularly if you're constantly connected to the internet.
What Should You Do?
If your network admin allows it (if you don't have a network admin - you're it :) ) you can easily turn off the windows Messenger services on Windows XP and on Windows 2000/NT:
Windows 2000/NT
Click Start->Programs->Administrative Tools->Services
Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK
Windows XP
Click Start->Control Panel
Click Performance and Maintenance
Click Administrative Tools
Double click Services
Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK
Unfortunately on Windows 98/ME it's not quite that easy. If you're doing file and print sharing, the best recommendation is to do it from behind a hardware firewall, or to install ZoneAlarm on your system and configure file and print sharing to only work on your local network, or limit file and print sharing bindings to the IPX protocol (if you don't know how to do this - get a firewall). If you're NOT sharing your files or printing then you should remove File and Print Sharing from your network configuration. Do this EVEN IF all you use is dialup. To do this click on:
Start/Settings/Control panel
Double click the icon labeled Network
Click the button labeled file and print sharing
Uncheck both the options in this box if they're checked.
When you click OK you'll need to reboot your computer.
If you're looking for a good hardware firewall for Cablemodem or DSL, that's inexpensive, the authors have used and tested the Linksys BEFSR41 firewall, and the Netgear RP334 firewall. Both provide good protection, and will protect you from this threat.
Additional Information
You can obtain more information about this annoyance from:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-962483.html?tag=dd.ne.dht.nl-sty.0
http://www.mynetwatchman.com/kb/security/articles/popupspam/index.htm
This concludes this VirusWarning notice, dated Friday, October 18, 2002.
Lee Drake
Aztek Computer Solutions, Inc.
39 N. Goodman St.
Rochester, NY 14607
585-242-2060
www.azcomputer.net
To sign up for VirusWarning see the instructions at:
http://www.leedrake.com/virus_notification.htm
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