Holy crap!

And the really scary thing is that the story under that link is over 4 years old, so that the sophisticiation of those techniques has increased accordingly.

Now, I expect that his concerns about XP have been dealt with (or we'd all be paralyzed), and firewalls have improved. But, still: Holy crap!

At least I don't have any of those nasties in my machine here at work -- I checked. But, then, those old ports are probably not the ones they use any more. HPH

 

It's still going on. Unfortunately a lot of people are unaware of how easy it is and also how easy it is to block with a simply firewall and being careful what email you open (spam).

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/01/2...r.ap/index.html

 

I rarely get any spam any more. Once in a while I get one, but I just delete anything I don't recognize. I use a couple of firewalls and keep my xp updated, so maybe that helps.

 

You can use that same netstat command and pipe the output through "more":

netstat -an | more

and examine the output looking for anything that says "Established" under the "State" column. If there are any that are not on your local network or referencing a DNS server, they are suspect.