Possible threat?

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 8:40 AM, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:
> Some folks on a mailing list have been infected with a virus that
> seems to be spreading rapidly. I thought I'd get a little info about
> who might be behind this by looking up the domain, which has been
> changing more than once a day. Earlier domains were very recently
> created, with a bogus admin contact, in the Ukraine.
>
> The current one is newsonmsnbc.com. I thought I'd copy this and do a
> whois. This time, though, I was in Claws mail, and not in my usual
> client, TheBat. Unfortunately, Claws mail immediately opens the link
> if you press the mouse button anywhere inside the link, and so it was
> opening in Opera even before I could move the mouse to copy. As soon
> as I realized this I went to Opera, stopped the access, and closed the
> tab. BUT - there was a very large surge of continuous disk activity
> which continued for a couple of minutes, with nothing else going on in
> the box [running 10.04]. Maybe a coincidence, but worrisome.
>
> So, what is the best way to check for a possible new malware problem
> if one sees suspicious activity?
>
> Anyone know what the newsonmsnbc.com link is trying to do?
>
> Thanks,
>
>    rikona


My first stop in checking out any site tends to be "web of trust"
(WOT): https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/newsonmsnbc.com
Reports on this site are not good.

--
Kevin O'Gorman

programmer, n. an organism that transmutes caffeine into software.