Virus-laden email exploiting the European storms

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINLAND_STORM_SPAM (no idea if the url will be good for any length of time)

Virus Exploits Interest in Europe Storm

HELSINKI, Finland (AP) -- Spammers are exploiting the public's interest in this week's European storm to spread a computer virus that sends junk e-mail, computer security experts said Friday.

The malicious program, dubbed "Storm Worm," has infected at least 10,000 PCs worldwide, said Mikko Hypponen, the head of research at F-Secure Corp. The virus arrives as an attachment to an e-mail.

The e-mails' subject line - "230 dead as storm batters Europe" - refers to Thursday's storm that disrupted travel for tens of thousands, shut down power and killed at least 47 people.

"The timing is particularly clever," Hypponen said. "They are taking advantage of people's curiosity in a natural disaster that has news value."

Once the attachment is opened, the virus is installed, allowing spammers to take control of the infected PC without the victims' knowledge. The computers can then be used to send more junk e-mail or pass along personal information.

The attachment itself is usually named "Full Clip.exe," "Full Story.exe," "Read More.exe" and "Video.exe."

"What is significant here ... is the timely nature of this assault in relation to the European storm," Hypponen said. "Malware gangs are clearly using every technique and even tragedies like these to gain access to vulnerable machines."

Have you noticed the new Kool-Aid commercials?

Now a giant pitcher of Kool-Aid is wearing SHORTS. It weren't like that when I was a young'un (GET OFF THE LAWN! Damn kids...), he just had two stubby legs for crashing through oddly-placed brick/block walls. So why shorts? Are we supposed to think that giant pitchers of flavored sugar and water have genitalia? Are there male and female giant pitchers of flavored sugar and water? Is there slash fic for two male pitchers of flavored sugar and water coming to realize their true feelings for each other?

Yes, we have snow up here

We haven't had any really appreciable snow fall since before New Year's. A little here and there, but nothing too big. In fact, we had an awful lot of brown ground from temperatures in the mid 30's to low 40's coupled with a little rain. The weather service(s) was projecting a foot or two of snow: Thursday night/Friday we got 4-6" at home and 8-10" at the observatory. It's a problem at the observatory because the spice must flow, err, sorry, the instruments must be fed. Several of the instruments must be manually filled with liquid nitrogen twice a day, generally at the start and end of the night shift. If they don't get fed, they warm up and Bad Things Can Happen. Not tremendously bad things, but it's usually not as simple as re-adding liquid nitrogen and cooling them down. It's a lot of work.

Russet decided to make the drive in this afternoon. She said it should not be attempted by two-wheel drive vehicles. WHEE!

When she got to the observatory the phones were out, all of the servers were crashed, all of the UPS batteries had discharged, and the power was out.

Fortunately the phones were out because of the power situation. They came back on as soon as the backup generator was running smoothly, which also started the UPS batteries recharging. The computer guy showed up and started getting the servers up. And once the servers are up and happily talking to each other, Russ can get the "snow program" running which moves the dome on a frequent basis to sort of try shaking snow off the top. Unfortunately the telescope motors got some nasty power glitches and Russ has to run a process to recalibrate them, apparently a long and boring process.

As for me, I'm cleaning up the house a little, playing some Warcraft here and there, and I was watching TV. Unfortunately I went to take the trash out and went to the back deck to remove snow from the satellite antenna, and I might have whacked the alignment as it's now not getting a signal. Oh, well. So much for watching Bloodrayne on SciFi tonight. Such a big loss, that.


I was supposed to work noon-10pm yesterday, the university was closed. Apparently they had some moderately serious snow fall in Alamogordo and tons of slush, and that town is more of a desert town than a mountain town, so they can't cope. Thus I missed ten hours of work, and since I now have a computer and desk of my very own, I have a lot of installation/configuration work to do on it. I called the security guard and he told me that school would be closed today, but they're planning on being open Sunday, so we'll see what happens. My boss apparently has been keeping in touch with The Powers That Be and modified the school's web page to let people know whether or not it'll be open. I need to get some groceries anyway, so I might have to make the trip down regardless. Fortunately the road going down the mountain is kept pretty well plowed and salted, so it shouldn't be a problem.