IM virii
Ho ho ho! It's that time of year again. No, not Christmas/ Chanukah/Kwanza/whatever you celebrate, but a new IM vrius is out. You might remember the one that went around in September, saying "look at the funny pic" as a link to a virus. That was later upgraded to respond with "lol, this is not a virus" Look, you can see me laughing at the irony as I remove it from 20 systems.
This new one is perfect for the season. It is a link to a picture of Santa, that also installs a rootkit! Yippee, it's the gift that keeps on giving. Do not, under any circumstances, click on a link over IM without verifying that it was meant to be sent.
Snarky's steps to verify IM:
- Ask them if they meant to send the link. If the answer is yes, cool.
- Ask them to repeat a simple phrase. I'm going to start using "Please say your name, followed by the phrase 'Snarky rules all'".
- Mouse over the link, and look at the URL. If it's something weird like 12.34.56.78/virus.exe don't click it. If it's from google.com, it just might be safe. Seeing as most people, however, don't know how to recognize a bad address, I highly reccomend you move on to step 4.
- Just do what I do, and ignore it! No really, if they love you enough to want to show you, they'll come over and show you.
IM virii are really taking off, and I'm sick of removing them. So, here's the deal. lets all give ourselves a big present, and not click links we don't know. Simple as that.
This post seems a bit "snarky", but it's late, and I just know I'm going to end up cleaning this one from at least one system.
