Friday, September 10, 1999

ICQ Identity Theft -- 12:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Redwood points to this News.Com article that a Trojan Horse under the guise of a JPEG file is being transmitted via email. This Trojan Horse steals ICQ numbers and passwords, allowing others to use them. Apparently the number of ICQ users has grown so large that people are resorting to stealing others numbers rather than put up with a mega-long ICQ ID number.

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. It is beyond sad if a low ICQ number becomes a status symbol. If your number is in the lower (six digit or less) range, you may want to watch out for this. It would be advisable to change your ICQ password and remove your email address from your details.

I'm not sure how a Trojan Horse can be added to a JPEG file, but if this report is real (which it seems to be) there must be a way.

The Master comments: It's the same old story. DON'T TRUST EMAIL ATTACHMENTS! It's SO easy to fool email apps into opening exe's that are named with differing extensions. In email, you can mark a file as executable and give it any extension, even .txt, and Windows will open it as an .exe. I NEVER trust my email apps. Save to disk, then use a graphics editor to open the files. Same with any other kind of attachment.

News for 09/10/1999

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