Allgemein - General/English

At the moment often e-mails arrive with attachments which contain malware. This is independent of the file type of the attachment. This malware can infect your PC and download additional malware. Some of this malware can encrypt all the files for which you have write access (including network shares).This happened recently in another institute of KIT. In this case all your data are lost, and in most cases the PC has to be re-installed. Most of these new malware programs cannot be detected by the antivirus program. The best antivirus program is the user himself if he thinks before he clicks.

So please open mail attachments only if you are sure that the e-mail is from a sender you know, and you expect an attachment from him. Please regard that the sender address can be faked, and the PC of the sender can be infected also. If you’re in doubt the please ask the sender if the e-mail is really from him. Do NOT reply but send him a new e-mail so that you can be sure that the e-mail address is correct. Please think twice if the sender really can know your KIT email address.

Even if you're addressed in the e-mail with your name or it contains a valid company logo this is no guarantee that the sender is really the one he pretends to be.

Don’t click on any shortcut in the mail because the shortcut shown may not be the real shortcut. Hover the mouse over the shortcut without clicking, and the destination will be shown. Only click when the destination is reliable and doesn’t have an ending which you don’t know.

If you think your PC is infected then switch it off immediately by pressing the power button until the PC is off. Then contact the IMT admin. He can check your PC with a bootable antivirus DVD.