Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment

Subject: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: GUEST,jennifer
Date: 14 Apr 04 - 02:30 AM

Could anyone shed any light on this strange ocurrence? I forwarded an email home from work, it was about a training event as it happens. But when it arrived here my husband mailed me back and said was that you, there's this weird email with all these attachments. They looked like .jpg files, he only opened one and it was a photo of two fossilised fish in a slice of rock. Then we deleted them all. The attachments didn't show up at work. I've emailed the woman who sent it but she hasn't replied, unless she's replied to work (I'm on holiday). We just updated to Norton 2004 and did a full scan but it didn't seem to pick anything up.
Wossit all about?
Thanks for any help.
Jennifer

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Apr 04 - 10:52 AM

the e-mail gremlins at work.

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: SINSULL
Date: 14 Apr 04 - 11:09 AM

Shades of the Love Virus? It was cleaned out of our systems at work but reared its ugly head again when someone (don't look at me!) opened a jpeg to which it had attached itself. And we were off and running again.

Are you getting reply emails from people in your address book to whom you haven't sent anything?

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 04 - 12:21 PM

All sounds very fishy to me...

Safest thing is, maybe, don't send or open attachments. It's anuisance, because it takes away a lot of the fun of the internet. But I suspect we'll all have to do it, before too long. Even emails from friends you know can get infected, or have infected attachments, without the friends having the faintest idea.

A way round is to set up a website, or borrow some webspace, and put stuff you want to send up there, and email people with a link, so they can download from there themselves.

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Apr 04 - 01:04 PM

Do you know any palaentologists?
John

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: GUEST,jennifer
Date: 14 Apr 04 - 06:34 PM

There seem to have been no unusual effects on our daily skip-load of spam, and I've done another complete Norton check which found two bad files in Temp Internet Files but I deleted them. At least no-one has said "ah yes the well known fossil fish virus" but I will be chasing this up at work tomorrow.

Thanks

Jennifer

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: GUEST,van
Date: 15 Apr 04 - 01:37 PM

I've had the returned emails from people in my mail list who I haven't emailed. (Buggered things up when I opened it.) So have a lot of people in my mail list. I've installed Norton, run it through McAfee (which seemed to be disabled by the problem, spybotted it, had a friend who has more computers than is healthy work through the beast but still have a problem. I reported it to MSN,as I have a problem with reaching the hotmail homepage, reloaded the latest version of explorer, but still have problems. Anyone with a solution will win a great deal of gratitude.

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Apr 04 - 02:09 PM

GUEST Van,

You've received "returned" emails because someone ELSE has a virus, they had your address in their machine, and when their machine sent out it's virus payload (spoofed to look like you sent it) to someone else in their address list, automated programs saw you in the "from" line and reported back to you that it couldn't be delivered. OR some variant of the above story.

Bottom Line: don't bother to open it if it appears to be returned unless it is returned the moment after you sent it (making it highly probable that it really IS returned). Anything else you never sent that is supposedly "returned" is something to be avoided at all costs.

For all that you have Norton, the best protection is to be leery of just about everything that comes through your email, and if it has even a hint of a problem, dump it.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Apr 04 - 02:25 PM

Jennifer, someone just mis-copied an email address. Probably a student paleontologist.
A while ago, a friend got confirmation on a wholesale furniture order. The sender had put the email address by memory and got it wrong.
You did the right thing by deleting and checking. As Sgt. Truth says, "Be careful out there." (or do you read mysteries?)

Subject: RE: Tech: mysterious fossil fish attachment
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 12:04 PM

Those aren't fossil fish, jennifer. That's a photograph of the free lunch that your company is going to provide at the training.