Forum Moderators: phranque
I have scanned for viruses etc but I come up clean, and I know that I did not attach anything to the email.
Has anyone come accross this before and know how I can stop it? (I am only guessing but could it have something to do with different computer configurations?)
Also can you get a virus from a .txt?
I did a search for the file on Google and do get results but do not understand any of them.
The file is ATT00014.txt (and the number can change)
I send out using International - Western European (Windows) - could that cause probs for a guy on a Mac?
Also should I use MIME or Uuencode? and what would it mean if I allow 8-bit charachters in headers?
I can only think it is a compatible issue. My emails are all plain text.
I often get these messages, but I use Linux exclusively so my system is immune to outlook viruses. Still they send mail in my name and I get messages from virus scanners that "my mail" has been refused and that I should check my system for viruses.
Getting such a message does not mean you have a virus, just that somebody else has.
Check your system anyway, especially if you use Windows and Outlook.
If you want to reduce the risk of getting a mail-based virus, quit outlook and use something else, like the mail in Netscape or some other non-outlook program.
René.
Some outlook viruses send out mails with random sender information, so any address can appear as the sender, even if you don't have the virus.
Maybe but the fact that on more than one occassion mail from VT intended for this particular person arrived - but with the txt file attachment - leads me to suspect VT's computer as the culprit.
Lorax I am not so sure I do have a virus. I am concerned about this as
a) I scan and nothing shows up (NAV 2002 latest)
b) when I do a serach on google I only get around 20 responses which is not a lot for a virus
c) nothing comes up on Symantec at all (through Search etc.)
d) the clients did not complain about a virus just that they did not want the attachment
e)I sent the same email to numerous people and not everyone got an attachment
The basic procedure is to boot up using the clean media and then insert your Norton install disk and run the scanner. Again - be absolutely sure that disk is clean as well. Now if Norton came on a CD then you may have to do a reinstall or perhaps they now have a utility to reboot and check. I'm not sure, so you'll have to do a little research at symantec's website.
The underlying problem is that once a virus gets loaded into memory it has free reign. If it is a DAME then it can mutate and hide and some of the later ones are extremely difficult/impossible to find. Even the Symantec engineers can't track them. Unlikely you'll ever see one of these but it's not unlikely that you'll get a TSR type virus if you don't keep your virus sigs up to date.
BTW - I found the same results you did. I'm guessing it's an older virus and therefore assumed to be undercontrol - thus a lack of documentation. That being said, if only one person is getting the attachment then perhaps the recipient has the virus. Are they using Outlook?
Tedster - Does your system create an attachment for incoming or outgoing emails? Also can I ask what was the name of the Attachment did it use the emails subject as the name?
I doubt this is the problem though as the file size is only 93 KB for a plain text email.
toadhall - yes that is pretty much the only useful thing that comes out of a Google search but I had not noticed that it refers to the receiving machine and not the sending machine. Thanks for pointing that out.
lorax - I am on Windows 98 and the machine is getting a few cobwebs so it could well be an old virus, I am checking re doing a scan in MS-DOS and as you suggest with a new boot.
Problem with asking the recipient is that it is a client and he suggested it was my machine and you know how touchy people can get when you start asking about their system because it might be theirs! Especially when there is so little documentation on the thing.
I doubt this is the problem though as the file size is only 93 KB for a plain text email.
This mail server truncated text emails at 25kb and attached the rest as a .txt document. It's been a few months since I saw it happen - maybe the sysadmin upped the limit.
I don't remember what the file name was for the text file - my memory says it was the first so many characters of the subject line, but my memory isn't to be trusted!
I, usually knowing how to spot an infected email didn't even think that this was a virus. I was thinking it was possibly her sig and she was sending mail in plain text format.
I opened the attachments and there was her body message along with their standard email disclosure notice. Fortunately I'm using the latest IE6 and Outlook. I cannot find anything definitive in the virus archives about this particular attachment.
Somewhere I think I ran across e-mail software that had a default maximum e-mail of 50KB before it automatically converted the message into an attachment. The user could change the maximum above, or below, 50KB.
The problem can be ephemeral because when your e-mails are smaller there's no problem. What makes it more mysterious is that different people have differing e-mail sizes that trigger the conversion to an attachment.
I have a system where my e-mails are generated by Perl and Lyris (e-mail software) so each e-mail is a newborn babe free of all worldly viruses. (I don't even run Outlook or Outlook Express on the machine.) However, I still have the problem VT describes.
I get e-mails like this, "I can't open your attachment!," "How come you're sending your e-mail as an attachment, now?" Nearly always, these problem e-mails are going to a business address. I assume the I'm-smarter-than-the-users webmaster has put some puritanical rules on incoming e-mail, whether size or some other factor.
The recipient can't talk to the company webmaster about it because my e-mail isn't business related.
So this is what I tell them, now. (I hope to have a better solution someday.) Upgrade your e-mail software to the latest version (especially AOL users). If that doesn't work then subscribe using a different e-mail address.
I know, I know, it's not an elegant solution but it nearly always solves the problem. Most people now days have more than one e-mail address, for example, their work address and their personal Hotmail address.
Another sledgehammer you can use is to put the information up on a webpage and just e-mail people the URL.
