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[cobalt-users] Sun and Raq and the Virus email



Two things I wanted to mention:

First, according to the Cobalt site, they've wrapped up the deal between Sun and Cobalt. There's one interesting "hint": the site indicates that you need to contact Cobalt for Cobalt-related problems and technical assistance...although there's a link to Sun tech support as well.

It's real early to say for sure but I get the feeling that Sun is treating the deal as the treatment of Cobalt as a sort of division and that could mean the continuation of a separate "system platform" for Cobalt machines rather than an attempt at full "integration". We'll just have to wait and see what the near future holds, I guess.

On the virus -- bit more serious. I received one today (hahaha@xxxxxxxxxxx). The email is about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (sic) -- and the attachment is called "midgets.scr" -- while hardly excelling in his/her use of the language, this "creative" moron is at least changing the suffix!

The real problem, however, is that one of my users also received this little gem and that person is NOT on any Cobalt tech lists (she's on issues and professional lists though). So either this is spreading to other lists (of a non-tech variety) or somehow this thing is picking up email addresses from us. I would tend to think the former since we're madd careful with this stuff and NEVER open an attachment that could be "self-triggering".

The bottom line, however, is that it's now clear that this person is going to try to circulate this to a wider audience and that makes it worth paying some attention to. Particularly true if it CAN harvest emails because that's going to happen on YOUR server! I have no idea whether it can do that but we ain't taking no chances.

We sent out an advisory this morning to all our clients and their site "users" telling them about this idiocy and warning them not to mess with the attachments at all. I just thought folks might want to consider doing the same.

Alfredo
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People-Link/Institute for Mass Communications
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