“The latest round of the Sober virus, first discovered a week ago, sends out waves of e-mails to addresses found on PCs already infected. A small percentage contained links to Web sites that tried to infect visiting machines with the virus,” Karen Heinselman writes for The Waterloo Cedar-Falls Courier (Iowa).
“Kris Brunkhorst of Waverly — a Macintosh owner and an apparent victim of Sober spam — said she didn’t attempt to go to any of the links. She uses Netscape, which she said opens e-mail even if she wants to delete it. Brunkhorst was surprised when her Apple G5 froze as it attempted to download 107 messages, some with familiar e-mail tags. She had hoped her Mac was tougher than that,” Heinselman writes.
“‘I don’t have a choice whether to open them up or not,’ Brunkhorst said. ‘Once you (click) down to who it is from in the in box it automatically opened up.’ On Wednesday, her in box continued to field return-to-sender messages with bogus addresses she never sent. One combined her mother-in-law’s name with the tail ‘wartburg.edu.’ Her mother-in-law, who received at least 200 unwanted messages, does not work for the college,” Heinselman writes. “Most viruses take advantage of Microsoft, like operating system vulnerabilities or address book capabilities, said Gary Wipperman, director of Information Technology Services at Wartburg. ‘Since most people use the Windows platform, it is the most bang for the buck (for the virus sender),’ Wipperman said. But other programs are vulnerable, too.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: How is it possible to get so much so thoroughly wrong? What’s an “Apple G5,” exactly? What does she mean by “froze?” Perhaps it was downloading the 107 email messages that took awhile and maybe the “Apple G5” wasn’t “frozen?” She uses “Netscape?” Netscape what? Netscape email? Online or the application? Maybe it was “Netscape” that froze, not the “Apple G5.” Why does the writer use an “Apple G5” owner as an example, when millions of Windows PCs have actually been infected with the Sober virus and Macs cannot be infected?
If she were to write an article about a Mad Cow disease outbreak, for example, would she focus on interviewing a vegan about the impact of rising vegetable prices? We can only assume that back when Firestone tires were shredding off SUVs on the highway, she was off like a shot to Pennsylvania to see what the Amish thought.
Facts: the Sober virus runs on Windows only, not Macs; and it isn’t because fewer people use Macs, it’s because Apple’s Mac OS X is more secure than Windows by design. A Mac’s email Inbox can become clogged with Sober spam, but the payload cannot affect Macs. There are zero viruses for Mac OS X. The writer of this corn-pone article has an email address:
To send a letter to The Waterloo Cedar-Falls Courier Editor: https://secure.townnews.com/wcfcourier.com/secure/letters/ or
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