(no subject)

[semperfiona]

Text of an email I just received at work.

There is an email circulating that has a link to a website for an e-greeting card that is actually a virus. Your antivirus software may not detect this as a virus, so as always, be very cautious when clicking on any links or attachments in email. IF YOU RECEIVE AN EMAIL SIMILAR TO THIS, PLEASE DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY. Following is Symantec.com's write-up on the virus: Friendgreetings Discovered on: October 24, 2002 Last Updated on: October 24, 2002 03:20:23 PM PDT Symantec Security Response is aware of a widespread E-card which appears to have the characteristics of a worm. Security Response does not classify this as a malicious threat and as such will not detect any files associated with the E-card. The installation of software associated with the E-card requires the user's permission in order to perform it's mass-mailing capabilities. By cancelling the installation of the software, no worm-like activities will be performed. The recipient would recieve an email with the following characteristics: Subject: %recipient% you have an E-Card from %sender%. Message: Greetings! %sender% has sent you an E-Card -- a virtual postcard from FriendGreetings.com. You can pickup your E-Card at the FriendGreetings.com by clicking on the link below. http:/ /www.friendgreetings.com/pickup/pickup.aspx? Message: ------------------------------------------------------------ %recipient% I sent you a greeting card. Please pick it up. %sender% ------------------------------------------------------------ When the link is followed, the recipient is asked to download some software in order to view the E-card. [picture of M$IE "trust this content?" dialog was here] The installer package will require the user to accept 2 End User License Agreements in order to complete the installation. The second EULA (see below) explicitly states that by accepting the agreement the end user is authorizing the software to send an email to all contacts in the Microsoft Outlook Contacts List. The email is formatted as displayed above. [picture of EULA dialog was here, containing the following text:] "1. Consent to E-Mail Your Contacts. As part of the installation process, Permissioned Media will access your MicroSoft Outlook(r) Contacts list and sent an e-mail to persons on your Contacts list inviting them to download FriendGreetings or related products. By download, installing, accessing or using the FriendGreetings, you authorize Permissioned Media to access your MicroSoft(r) Outlook(r) Contacts list and to send a personalized e-mail message to persons on your Contact list. IF YOU DO NOT WANT US TO ACCESS YOUR CONTACT LIST AND SEND AN E-MAIL MESSAGE TO PERSONS ON THAT LIST, DO NOT DOWNLOAD, INSTALL, ACCESS OR USE FRIENDGREETINGS." If this agreement is not accepted, the installation is not complete and the software will not send a link to the www.friendgreetings.com website via email.

Mis-use of the term virus gets on my nerves. Symantec's description is accurate, but the company helpdesk's is not. This isn't a virus. It's an application with rather unfriendly habits--enticing people to send spam to their friends and thereby bypass most spam filters--but it doesn't install itself, it doesn't run itself, and it lets you cancel out even if you did attempt to install and run it.

Comments

[technomom]

Yep, it's malware, but not a virus. I don't mind the misuse of the term quite as much as long as people get it through their heads that yes, there is nasty stuff out there.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

I hate general cluelessness about computers in general, especially when someone relies on them to do their work. I was asked to call someone who ordered an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier from us. Apparently picked us out of the phone book (we're a VAR/consulting firm). She wanted someone to call and answer her questions about it. I was handy. I asked her if they used Microsoft Windows. The answer I got was "No, we use Microsoft Word". Ok, back slowly away from the computer.....

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

I dunno - I'm as pedantic as the next guy, but I think a generic term for malware is needed, and virus is nicely euphonious. It's something on your computer stealthily doing things you'd very much rather it didn't. (Hm - not sure if I'd include spyware under the 'virus' umbrella for that reason, though. Something with effects that you can detect, such as mailing all your contact list, definitely counts, though, imo)

[curgoth]

But.... it's not viral.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

It is, imo - it just includes a human in its transmission vector.

You get a card. Prompted by the card, you install the software. The software mails a card to everyone on your list. They each get a card. Prompted by the card...

I'd call it viral, myself, in the looser sense of the word that the computer industry seems to have spawned.

My main contention is that viruses and co., having spilt over from hacker esoterica to mainstream userland incursions, need some generic term that refers to their intent rather than their mechanism. They're a social problem now, not a technical one.

[semperfiona]

::Nods:: I see your point, but where is the line? Is the .sig that I've seen which says something like "You have been infected by the .sig virus, go delete all your files" a virus? It too involves a human in its transmission, and if they really do follow the directions, will cause destruction far worse than this FriendGreetings thing, but I don't think you can call it a virus.

Obviously this thing is more insidious than that, but I still think it's not a virus in the classic sense. I would call it a chain letter of a rather aggressive nature.

I'm just sorry to see precise words lose their precision. It's hypocritical of me, I suppose; as a trained linguist I recognize that languages must change and grow to stay alive, but as an aficionada of English and a pedant (not to mention sometimes a curmudgeon), I don't like misuse through ignorance. Creative stretching of meanings is another matter altogether.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

Just because a sharp line cannot be drawn (and Pratchett, Stewart and Cohen addressed this point very well indeed in The Science of Discworld)) doesn't mean that the original dichotomy is worthless. You can instead have a region of A, a region of not-A, and a fuzzy shading between the two.

Corrolarily, the fact that you can draw a sharp line at some point along the spectrum doesn't imply that that is the right place to make the demarcation.

The reason that the greetingcardthingy is more than a chain letter (albeit less than a classical-definition virus) is that it involves a self-replicating program as part of the chain. And it uses stealth to do so. What if there were a feature installed in IE to autoclick through EULAs? I bet considerably more than half the users would set it on. Or, conversely, what if there was an ultraparanoid security feature that required an extra mouseclick every time a new process was launched? Most people would get into the habit of blindly clicking the mouse and being annoyed at the delay. Either modification would render the gct indistinguishable from an ordinary virus/worm/trojan/whatever.

It's not really a question of words losing their precision; it's a matter of having to find a word for the general case when a lot of things get grouped into a set - you either pick one of the members to represent the whole ('man' for 'human' is prolly the most notorious example) or you invent a completely new word that may or may not catch on ('malware' hasn't, frinstance). Evolutionary pressure usually takes care of the rest.

Besides which, how many people could tell you the difference between a virus and a bacterium nowadays?