Tweets,

Here's a couple of helpful messages that those of you on Birdchat have
already seen.

Dan Victor, Seattle, WA mailto:dcv at scn.org
Tweeters = http://www.scn.org/tweeters/
==============
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:57:11 -0600
From: Dave Rintoul <drintoul at ksu.edu>
To: BIRDCHAT at listserv.arizona.edu
Subject: [BIRDCHAT] ADMIN: How to avoid infection with VBS worms

Greetings

Here is a website that tells you how to configure your Windows computer
(Win95, 98, 2000 or NT) so that computer worms like the Anna Kournikova
OnTheFly specimen mentioned yesterday will not run. Basically this
disables the file extension for the Visual Basic Script (VBS) file type.
If this is disabled, when you click on a file with that extension, you
won't run the script and infect your computer. Since there are very few
times you will need to run a VBScript, this is a pretty painless way to
save yourself a lot of grief. And yes, I know that the Mac folks out there
are chuckling to themselves (and, ahem, I sure hope they keep it to
themselves) since none of this is a problem for them at all. I'm sure that
they "feel your pain", however.

Anyway, go to this URL

http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/u-vbs/

and follow the instructions for your specific Windoze operating system.

As always, comments or questions about this ADMIN message should be
directed to me rather than to the list at large. Please.

Regards

Dave

Dave Rintoul, co-listowner <mailto:drintoul at ksu.edu>
Biology Division - KSU ICBM: 39.18N, 96.34W
Manhattan KS 66506-4901 VOX: 785-532-6663
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~drintoul/ FAX: 785-532-6653

=============
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:16:04 -0700
From: Greg Pasquariello <gpasq at pasq.net>
To: BIRDCHAT at listserv.arizona.edu
Subject: Re: [BIRDCHAT] ADMIN: How to avoid infection with VBS worms

BTW, one of the ways these worms work is by taking advantage of the fact
that Windows hides file extensions by default. So it looks like the file
is called picture.gif (which cannot infect you) when in reality it is
called picture.gif.vbs or picture.gif.exe.

You can enable the display of the extension by going to Windows Explorer
(the file manager, not IE), Tools/Folder Options/View, deselecting "Hide
file extensions for known types" and clicking OK.

---
Greg Pasquariello
theoreality, Inc.
gpasq at theoreality.com <mailto:gpasq at theoreality.com>
http://www.theoreality.com
720-236-7411