The following article was submitted by our very own fellow Adlander, Trina Sonnenberg, in another thread in my forum. It's so good and so important that I've decided to create a separate thread for it. If you haven't met Trina, yet, do invite her to your friends list. She is an excellent writer with a lot of very intelligent and helpful things to say. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hackers and Hoaxes By Trina L.C. Schiller Everyone who has an ISP, understands, or at least knows about how hackers use viruses, Trojans and other web nasties, to infect and mess up your computer. No headline news there. (Unfortunately, we still don't understand why they do it, or at least I don't.) But hackers don't have to write malicious code or hijack your browser to do some serious damage to your system. Oh no... A well written email with no attachments, can do the trick. They only have to start a rumor. Hackers can easily manipulate you into trashing your own computer. All they have to do is begin a hoax. What do I mean by that? Let me explain. Have you ever gotten emails from people you know that say something like: Scan your hard drive for such and such a file! If you find it delete it immediately! Pass this on. Warn everyone you know! These emails are originally generated by a hacker and spread throughout the Internet to get you to delete files you need, thus creating havoc for your system. They are hoaxes. Hoaxes work incredibly well for getting average people to cause their own computers to malfunction. the hacker doesn't have to spend any time creating malicious code and a method of distribution, all they have to do is play on the human tendency for hysteria; send out a warning that something evil is spreading, and if you find it on your computer, get rid of it! Recently I was tracking a thread on a forum, where the moderator warned everyone about a file that he found on his system that was a keylogger. (A keylogger is a malicious program designed to track your every move through monitoring your keystrokes.) He warned everyone to search for a file, ans2000.ini and, "delete the booger." I scan my system every day, with several different virus/ spyware programs, and I never picked up this file with any of them, so I decided to do a Windows Explorer search for it. Sure enough, I found it on my hard drive. Oh My God! Before hitting the delete key though, I looked it up on the web. I Googled the specific file and found quite a bit of information on it. The file ans2000.ini is used in the keylogger program known as ProBot SE. However, it is also used in many other legitimate programs as well. Ok, so now what do I do? Well, I contacted my go-to guy, Jim Gray, owner of Quikonnex, and asked him what his thoughts were. He told me to open the ini file, in Notepad, and read it. Sure enough, this file did have an association to another program on my system. It is part of ActivEbook Compiler. It was right there in print, at the top of the file. Now had I just freaked out when I found the file, and deleted the booger, I would've trashed my ebook compiler, making it useless to me. Two points for the hacker who started the hoax! Hoaxes are just as dangerous as live viruses, because they inspire you to destroy your own programs. I am sure they are a particular kick for the one starting the hoax, as they are getting you to do bad things to your own system. Fear is a powerful motivator, and hoaxes, by design, are created to cause panic and fear in the less experienced Internet traveler. So, before going and deleting files from your hard drive, go check them out. Do a search for them and read the information you find. Don't just go deleting things without learning about them first, or you just may end up cutting your own throat. And, NEVER forward these types of warning emails to others until you know for a fact that the information is correct, or you're likely to have your friends and family after you for misinforming them. Resources for validating virus/ hoax information: http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp http://www.vmyths.com/ http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/hoax/ Copyright © 2005 The Trii-Zine Ezine http://www.ezines1.com -------------------------------------------------------------------- God bless, Dave

Dear Dave, I am learning a lot from your forums and Trina's posts. Thanks very much for this information! Sincerely,

Thanks Dave for passing this great info to us. I would of never known that a hoax email could render us like that.

Thank you Dave for such and honor, and for your flattering remarks. You did it again my friend... I am blushing. I remember when I was a complete newbie online. I got one of those famous hoaxes that told everyone to delete a particular file. I went ahead and got rid of it, and ended up having to spend hours on the phone with tech support, formatting and reloading my system. OUCH! Most of these hoaxes prey on those of us who use a Windows OS. They compel us to romove things that are integral parts of the OS itself, allowing us to turn our expesive electronics into a useless pile of circuits and plastic. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fortunately for me, I haven't fallen for that again. Another word of advice... Back up your data at least once a month, so that if you do suffer damage, you can recover more quickly and with less stress. What I have done is to install a second hard drive to my system, as a slave. I use it to backup the files on my main drive. Then, every once and awhile, I will zip all those files and burn them to a CD, and clear the drive.. That way, if the worst case senario occurs, (my back up drive is infected, or corrupted) I can pull my files from the CD. Once the back up drive has been backed up to a CD, I recopy the files from my main drive, to the slave. That keeps the freshest copies of my files on the slave. You see, if the main drive needs formatting, when it is ready for program installation, all I need to do is drag and drop my backups from the slave to the master. Big time saver. Have an awesome day! Trina

Many thanks to Dave and Trina. And here I thought my security was as tight as finding a pin on Pluto. Thanks Again, Don