On Monday afternoon (July 13), thousands of K-Staters received malicious e-mail messages with .zip attachments. DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENTS IN THESE E-MAILS, nor click on any links in these messages. Opening the attachment will result in your computer becoming infected and then being used to try to infect other computers by sending the malicious e-mails to accounts both on and off campus.
The malicious e-mails have subjects like:
- Your friend invited you to twitter!
- You have received A Hallmark E-Card!
- Shipping update for your Amazon.com order 254-78546325-658742
- Jessica would like to be your friend on hi5!
and the attachments have names like:
- Invitation Card.zip
- Postcard.zip
- Shipping documents.zip
Nearly 100 K-State computers became infected on Monday when people opened the malicious attachments. If you opened one of these malicious attachments, contact your IT support person or the IT Help Desk (785-532-7722) immediately, since your computer is probably infected and must be reformatted (and have software reinstalled) before it can be used on the campus network again.
IT Services personnel are blocking network access for the infected computers as they are identified, and the malicious attachments have been reported to our antivirus software vendor (Trend Micro). The best defense, though, is for everyone to be diligent about not opening unexpected or suspicious e-mail attachments.
PLEASE think before you click! If you ever have any doubt about the legitimacy of an e-mail message, ask your IT support person or the IT Help Desk.
