Wednesday, May 22, 2002

if you receive an email from the state department...

A virus that is grabbing the email address of the US State Department, and placing it in the "from" field of emails resulted in a large number of people receiving virus infected emails apparently from the State Department on Tuesday. Variations of the Klez virus have been around since the late 1990s, but recently have been very active. When the program infects a computer, it searches the computer for email addresses, and randomly inserts an address into the "to" field and the "from" field. It appears that someone who was on a mailing list from the State Department caught the virus, and it began to spread to other people on that mailing list. Be careful when you open those emails, regardless of whom they're from.