The University of Leicester has been besieged by another worm, Nachi-A,
affecting some unprotected machines and then overwhelming the servers
searching for new machines to infect. Fortunately, most of our machines are
up to date and protected.

However, one of the effects of the 'false origin' worms is that the
supposed sender receives a message suggesting that the infected email came
from them (thus doubling the effect of the worm's activity). If we are then
tempted to send another message reassuring people that we are not the
offender, this then triples the effect.

Many servers were slowed and consequently taken offline by the weight of
emails from the initial worm attacks, so we ought to be careful not to make
things worse. We need to be able to assume that people apparently receiving
infected mail from us will trust us enough to know that this is a 'false
origin' email.

However, if you receive an email with an attachment you are unsure of, but
from someone you recognise, it is sometimes worth checking with the
apparent sender that they have actually sent it before doing anything with
the attachment.

Finally, Worms don't need you to open an email or an attachment, to infect
you. All they need is a computer connected to the internet with no firewall
and virus protection which is not up to date, and Bingo! they're in.

We all owe it to each other to make sure we have a firewall and to keep our
virus protection current.

Sorry: end of rant.

All the best

Jim Roberts

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