Yesterday I was at work, just typing along helping customers, when I got a message from a co-worker. The message started blinking I opened it up and the content said “hey isn’t this you, and it showed a jpeg file from Photoshare. The message being from a trusted co-worker I clicked on the file to open it, and all HELL broke lose.

Symantec freaked out and told me that it had detected multiple Trojan Horses. Immediately after I clicked on it, I saw my email address I knew exactly what I had done. It spread throughout our entire coporation, infecting hundreds of computer.

It initially started with a co-worker that got it from an outside source and worked its way through his contact list, to multiple people that eventually made it to me and I continued the cycle because I was not warned early enough. Still today we have not been able to get it off numerous computers including mine, that we are now not able to use until IT makes it over here to clear them off.

People out side of the company have told us that it took hours of work yesterday to get it off of theirs. I was told by a co-worker that she had sent it to her cousin that works for a different company, and it pretty much shut down operations for the day.

This is pretty much the series of events that happens. Someone on your contact list gets infected, after they had downloaded the executable file, it then attaches to the messaging program that you are using, and sends out a message with the file, to random contacts on your list posing as you.

So if you get a message from a trusted contact, that asks you “Hey isn’t this you?” don’t download it just close the screen, open up a knew one and ask that person if they just sent you a picture… mostly likely the won’t have.