Latest Virus & Hoax Info

Returned messages and warnings that your message contained a virus

If you receive a mail message that says a virus was found in a message you sent or that a message you sent to someone (even though you never sent any such message) was returned, don't panic. There are two main reasons why you received the message. Either your system is infected with a virus, or someone else is infected and the virus is pretending to be you.

You may have a virus

Make sure that antivirus software is installed and running on your system, automatically scanning all files and incoming mail in real-time. If you don't have antivirus software, you're a sitting duck and are begging for a virus to infect your system.

If you do have antivirus software, make certain that your antivirus signatures are up-to-date. If your signatures are not up-to-date, download new signatures and scan your system.

If your signatures are up-to-date and the software is running properly, most likely you do not have a virus. If you want to be certain, run a scan of your system using your antivirus software. Otherwise, it is more likely that your address is being forged.

Your address is being forged

The Klez and Sobig viruses are the main cause of these kinds of messages. When one of these viruses infect a machine, it looks through address books, cached web pages, documents, etc., looking for addresses. It then sends itself to these addresses, using one of them to forge the From line. When this infected message is caught by someone's mail system, the system sends out a warning to the sender.

With Klez and Sobig (and others), the message is sent to the forged address, not to the real infected PC. To avoid this problem, Olin's anti-virus system does not send out warnings when it detects one of them. Not everyone does this, however, so you may continue to receive similar messages.

So if you receive a warning message that you sent a message containing the Klez or Sobig virus, don't worry. All it means is that someone was infected with the virus who has your email address on their system. See Symantec's web site for more information about Klez and Sobig.