Whoa.... .Mac Spam assault?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Man oh man... my .mac inbox was just clobbered by spam (sporting a .zip file enclosing a .exe). Is there something on the loose out there?



Anyone else see this today?



H.S.E.

Mandricard

AppleOutsider

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    yeah, me and several others at the "other place"
  • Reply 2 of 14
    Same here, from the FBI.



    It's in the News too.:



    From the AP



    http://apnews.excite.com/article/200...D8E17QU00.html







    From the FBI, Comcast, and many others.
  • Reply 3 of 14
    Geez.... like 60 or 70 in the last 4 hours!
  • Reply 4 of 14
    ibuzzibuzz Posts: 135member
    I got the same thing. a "returned email" with attachment (.zip with .exe) from comcast. including this message.

    "SMTP_Error []

    I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message.

    This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out."



    I forwarded it to .mac securtiy.

  • Reply 5 of 14
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    oops... just saw this AFTER i started my own thread on the subject. yes, i am being clobbered by spam. i went from no spam to like 30-40 a day, all from fbi.gov and cia.gov spoofed addresses.
  • Reply 6 of 14
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    okay, now i'm getting wonderful "smtp mail failed" messages and messages about paris hilton and nicole richie.



    grrrrrrrrrrraaaaaAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!



    can i forward these to a reporting place to get the spoofers arrested? i've done it int he past, but it never seeemed to help. i have to assume these nimrods are sending out e-mails at such a fast pace, they'll eventually trace it back to them. but i want to hurry that process along (the "arresting them" part), if i can.







    edit: seems it's actually the result of the W32/Sober worm... for the sorry ass that opens and runs the .exe file that's attached, it'll use its own smtp engine to send out e-mails, sppofing addresses like "fbi.gov," etc., with its semi-official sounding e-mail telling the recipient to open the attachment and, thereby, spread the worm.



    so odds are, someone i know opened the damn thing, and also spread it to others in their address book... who probably ALSO had me in their adddress books, one of them probably opened the attachment, and so on, and so on, and so on...



    we mac users may not be the root cause of crap like this, but god know, when stuff like this happens, we're still affected.
  • Reply 7 of 14
    I got about 150 last night... and I never get spam on my .mac acct. and they are still coming....



    GEEZ. Why can't they stop this?
  • Reply 8 of 14
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mandricard

    I got about 150 last night... and I never get spam on my .mac acct. and they are still coming....



    GEEZ. Why can't they stop this?




    i love the way fbi says never to open any e-mail from unknown sources, yet the worm is spoofing THEIR ADDRESS. if you can't trust an e-mail from the organization that's supposed to prevent stuff like this, who can you trust?



    and it's the perfect text/address setup, too, to get maximum open-rate. if you feel you've been wrongly accused by the fbi via this e-mail, you'll open it to clear your name. if you've done something online that you're feeling guilty of *cough*pr0n*/cough*, then you'll open it too.



    and of course, it seems to be forwarding addresses back to spammers to generate new e-mails.



    ugh.
  • Reply 9 of 14
    My .mac email is okay. I've had good luck using the latest version of SpamSieve.
  • Reply 10 of 14
    All seems fine now, they have stopped for the past two days. I wonder who stopped it, Apple or the FBI. ?



    Although I wonder if it was Mail's Junk Filter, which I applied to all of them.
  • Reply 11 of 14
    justinjustin Posts: 403member
    Btw, I'm just migrating from Windows XP and haven't activated my .mac account yet.



    Strangely I'm not getting any sober worm types on Windows, having suffered from everything else Windows brings with it.



    Does using a router prevent this at all? I don't open email unless it's from people I know. When I'm curious to see what an unknown email contains, it goes straight into the spam box.



    I wonder if anyone could recommend any protection so that I know before I set up my Mac to receive emails...
  • Reply 12 of 14
    I would not worry about it so much, I did double click on the .zip file that is attached to them, but the Download window told me there was an application, so that's when I figured, ok this is a virus attack.



    Just keep marking them as junk and thats it. It worked for me.
  • Reply 13 of 14
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    yeah, the spam surge stopped about 48 hrs into the attack. my guess is that there are some common telltale characteristics to attcks like these, and apple stopped it at the server (heck, they have to pay for the bandwidth and server spac hogged by this sort of thing, so aside from the customer p.r. issue, it just makes sense for apple to put a stop to it).
  • Reply 14 of 14
    ibuzzibuzz Posts: 135member
    I think it helps to forward the crap to apple spam cops ([email protected]) as i did in this case. just fill up their mail box with the stuff and eventually, something will get done. Be sure to send the long header info.(instructions here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=151595
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