Java in a spam email: Possible virus?

[Dan Mitchell]

Today I received a spam with a unique feature I have never seen before in 7+ years of emailing, a JAVA applet. I use "Internet Mute" which blocks Java (as well as cookies, etc.) unless I ok it. The moment I highlighted this e-mail to delete it (obvious spam) it opened a Java script error box (which is what always happens when Internet Mute is on and some Java comes along). I need to stress this was simply upon highlighting the message in the list of those received, NOT upon clicking on any attachments, executables etc. The "subject" was des567@Flashmail.com 3784, "from" shir4455@ematic.com. It was not even possible to view the message content (presumably because my PC stopped the Java script), which I deleted & which did not do any harm (or anything else) to my PC. I wondering if this is this just a new more irritating trend in spam or something more sinister.

Dan

[Ghost_Hacker]

I'm sure your email was just SPAM. But, some of the newer worms I've seen can be activated without "running" them. For instance the ANN...VBS worm that hit not to long ago. If you saved it to your desktop and just try to delete it without running the program. It would replicate it self therefore preventing you from deleting it. The only way to delete it was to remove the VBS file extension from being associated with any actions.
Note: it would only replicate itself, but not try to perform any other action that the worm was capable of doing had it be "ran"


It's also belived that the next wave of worms and viruses will be "HTML" based. So just viewing them in your email's preview plane would be all thats needed to activate them.

I would be interested in hearing what anyone else knows about the subject.

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"It's just a whisper in my Ghost"

[Randy_tx]

A good place to go when you receive a suspicious email is http://housecall.antivirus.com/default.asp
They have the latest virus patterns and the service is free.....It checks for a virus and will even eradicate it free.....They use the information to alert corporate customers of new virus' in the wild.

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"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT

[Technochic]

It seems that worms are the wave of the future - and are getting more dangerous. Here's a good article on the worm problem: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-5125673-0.html
and here is a great site to get all kinds of info on all viruses: http://www.viruslist.com/eng/default.asp

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When in doubt... reboot!