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By Dale Hartle, District Webmaster
As District Webmaster I often receive complaints about the number of viruses being circulated amongst Toastmaster Club email addresses.
Our website hosting provider has assured us that the website is not responsible for circulating these viruses, and our Death2Spam email protection system traps all viruses routed through the Toastmasters New Zealand Domain.
However, all Toastmasters must take responsibility for cleaning up their own systems, ensuring their operating system patch levels are up to date, and regularly updating their anti-virus systems. Spoofing (impersonating or pretending to be someone else or faking the origin) of email addresses is rife on the internet, as well as mass-mailing viruses, and worms such as Sasser and Gaobot are also impacting on web users which exploit security holes on unpatched and unprotected systems.
All Toastmasters must be alert to the issues involved in web and email security and take steps to minimise or avoid infection. Alternatively you can use traditional communication methods such as the phone, and fax.
Read all about the latest threats and download fixes and virus signature update files from your anti-virus provider:
Trend Micro - http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/
Nortons - http://www.symantec.com/norton/security_response/definitions.jsp
McAfee - http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/
F-Secure -
Bookmark these sites for future reference, and use ChangeDetection to set up an alert to monitor updates to these pages.
Research
Check the Virus Encyclopaedia to read all about specific viruses, worms, trojans and hoaxes
or find out what a virus, worm, trojan or virus hoax actually is.
Virus: A virus is a piece of programming code usually disguised as something else that causes some unexpected and usually undesirable event. A virus is often designed so that it is automatically spread to other computer users. Viruses can be transmitted as attachments to an e-mail note, as downloads, or be present on a diskette or CD. The source of the e-mail note, downloaded file, or diskette you've received is often unaware of the virus. Some viruses wreak their effect as soon as their code is executed; other viruses lie dormant until circumstances cause their code to be executed by the computer. Some viruses are playful in intent and effect ("Happy Birthday, Ludwig!") and some can be quite harmful, erasing data or causing your hard disk to require reformatting.
Worm: In a computer, a worm is a self-replicating virus that does not alter files but resides in active memory and duplicates itself. Worms use parts of an operating system that are automatic and usually invisible to the user. It is common for worms to be noticed only when their uncontrolled replication consumes system resources, slowing or halting other tasks.
Trojan: In computers, a Trojan horse is a program in which malicious or harmful code is contained inside apparently harmless programming or data in such a way that it can get control and do its chosen form of damage, such as ruining the file allocation table on your hard disk. In one celebrated case, a Trojan horse was a program that was supposed to find and destroy computer viruses. A Trojan horse may be widely redistributed as part of a computer virus.
Virus hoax: A virus hoax is a false warning about a computer virus. Typically, the warning arrives in an e-mail note or is distributed through a note in a company's internal network. These notes are usually forwarded using distribution lists and they will typically suggest that the recipient forward the note to other distribution lists. If you get a message about a new virus, you can check it out by going to one of the leading Web sites that keep up with viruses and virus hoaxes. If someone sends you a note about a virus that you learn is a virus hoax, reply to the sender that the virus warning is a hoax.
Information from www.whatis.com
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