{"id":42,"date":"2008-02-14T12:40:31","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T16:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acadweb.swarthmore.edu\/wp\/its\/2008\/02\/14\/happy-valentines-day-join-a-botnet\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T12:40:31","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T16:40:31","slug":"happy-valentines-day-join-a-botnet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/2008\/02\/14\/happy-valentines-day-join-a-botnet\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Valentine\u2019s Day?! Join a Botnet!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Malware writers are hoping that you&#8217;ll open that Valentine&#8217;s Day card <strong>they <\/strong>sent you.  Unfortunately, in addition to a greeting, the seemingly innocent &#8220;card&#8221; will be downloading malicious software to your PC.  Once downloaded, your PC will become a bot, or drone, and will then join a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Botnet\" title=\"Botnet definition\">botnet<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that these trojan Valentine&#8217;s Day cards require you to click on a URL link within the email.  That link will then show you <em>festive<\/em> images (below) while it downloads malicious software such as &#8216;valentine.exe&#8217;.  The downloads are constantly changing (morphing) so as to avoid detection by anti-virus software.  If &#8216;valentine.exe&#8217; or similar malicious software is successfully installed, you&#8217;ll unknowingly become part of a botnet and will soon be sending spam, attacking other computers, etc.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/stormval.gif\" title=\"Valentine Images from Malicious URL\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/stormval.gif\" alt=\"Valentine Images from Malicious URL\" align=\"absmiddle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Valentine Images at Malicious URL\" align=\"absmiddle\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As always, <strong>never <\/strong>click on URL links in unsolicited email messages -and- never download files unless they&#8217;re from a known, trusted site.  Happy Valentine&#8217;s Day and stay out of the botnets!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malware writers are hoping that you&#8217;ll open that Valentine&#8217;s Day card they sent you. Unfortunately, in addition to a greeting, the seemingly innocent &#8220;card&#8221; will be downloading malicious software to your PC. Once downloaded, your PC will become a bot, or drone, and will then join a &#8220;botnet&#8220;. The good news is that these trojan Valentine&#8217;s Day cards require you to click on a URL link within the email. That link will then show you festive images (below) while it downloads malicious software such as &#8216;valentine.exe&#8217;. The downloads are constantly changing (morphing) so as to avoid detection by anti-virus software. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/2008\/02\/14\/happy-valentines-day-join-a-botnet\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy Valentine\u2019s Day?! Join a Botnet!!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email","category-security"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph2nPL-G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}