I got an email....from myself??

Ok, I'm not sure if this is the correct forum to post this...

Today when I got to work, I checked my work email. In the inbox, there was an email from....myself....

It had my display name, and the header were my exact address...

Nobody knows my password.....and nobody has access to my email account except maybe the network admins...

It is a state government email system, so the security is up to par....

The subject line of the email:

586876


the body of the email simply read:

969


the message was sent at 4:21pm EST....I was off yesterday (6/6/06) and at 4:21, I was sitting in the movie theatre watching the preview that were before "The Omen".....

My questions are...

Is this simply some sort of system check that keeps tabs on how often people check their email?

I didn't send the email, so who could have?

Is there any significance to those numbers? I took a quick look and didn't notice any.

Has anyone else ever had something similar happen?


Thanks for the input, and sorry if this is the wrong forum for this....

[edit on 7-6-2006 by JSquared]

no it probably means you have a virus or trojan of some type on your pc, that is sending emails to everyone in your address book including yourself.

nothing paranormal here...moving to a forum where you'll probably get some technical help regarding the issue.

thanks for the swift reply, but I don't think that is the answer....

like I said, it is a State government network.....highly secure...

and each of our systems run daily scans, not to mention the scans that I perform myself....

You may have left your workstation unlocked and one of your co workers is playing a gag on you

I didn't leave my workstation unlocked or anything of that sort...I don't even leave my home PC logged on when I am not using it...I have a degree in computer programming....I am highly educated when it comes to computers.....I know how easy it is for someone to get in and mess with things...

I know this was not sent from my machine....The only thing I can figure is that it is some sort of security measure used by network admins or something.....the full header of the email revealed that it came from my correct address and the State's network....

I guess I'll just have to contact one of the network folks to get an answer....

Thanks for trying though, and have a great day!

PS: I'll let you all know if I find the answer....hey, the lottery drawing is tonight, maybe I somehow went forward in time and sent myself an email with these numbers because they are somehow connected to that....hehe..one can only wish..

Just saw this thread. The exact same thing happened to me on Monday afternoon, 6/5. The subject line of the email was: 557

And the message was: 5556

I was at my desk when it happened.

Now how weird is that? I blew it off at the time, but remembered it when I saw this thread. Definitely not a co-worker joke.

Not sure if I'm stating the obvious here, but there really is nothing preventing someone else to fake the "From:" header by putting your email address in there. Spammers often does this.

It's easy, try it in your Outlook config, enter "Agent Smith" <[email protected]> for example then send a message to your friend. The recipient will never know the address is fake unless he check the "Received:" header for originating IP address. Did it come from your own computer, or another computer in the building, or from some unknown IP address in China? You get the idea?

I know I didn't send it, and nobody else has access to my e-mail.
It came in on my Thunderbird client to an acct. that is only used by my family and a couple friends.

My computer does daily virus scans and all incoming mail is scanned.
I'm curious what the answer to this will be.

Originally posted by ufia
.....or from some unknown IP address in China? You get the idea?

You might have hit it on the head there.....The system bounces it around several times before it is actually sent, but I did a Whois IP lookup for all the header IP's and they all turned up as State IP's.......except for one, and it looked kind of suspicious...Africa something or another....

I'm going to head down to IT in a bit, I'll post their opinion when I get back....

Again, thanks for all the input, and I hope there isn't anything to this...

My only question though is that if it IS like you guessed, why would they send out something like this that didn't contain a virus or some sort of scam?....Do all these numbers everyone is getting MEAN anything? Or is it just some spammer trying to meet a quota?

I'll post back in about an hour with my findings...

I received one as well on Monday 6/5. My subject was 1545453. The body was
5556. Very strange indeed.I'm going to have to do some further digging.Just checking where it come from says me.I see no others.

That happens to me all the time. But it's not a hack or a virus, it's usually a coworker using my account to send out prank emails and "i'm coming out of the closet" confessions. Always makes for a good laugh though....unless it's Monday, don't screw with people on Mondays.

Always lock your work station!!!

or else everyone in the office will look at you funny when you come back from the toilet.

Sporty

Yeah, Sporty I don't think thqat's what we're dealing with here. Seems to be a widespread issue-

groups.google.co.vi...

Doesn't look like you can do much about it. Spammers trolling for an email address to use as "From" on outgoing spam?

[Edit to add addtn'l info]

Here you go-
isc.sans.org...

A new twist in spammer tactics is being reported, although we're not sure what their goal is at the moment. Some of our readers report receiving messages apearing to originate from themselves, with only numbers as subject and body. >MORE AT LINK<

[Edit for another update]

Latest from the above Google Groups link-

New Email Threat using Numbers in Subject Line* Symantec Security Response is advising users to take extra precautions when opening emails that contain just numbers in the subject line.
On June 6, 2006 Symantec Security Response observed increases in email activity through Symantec's Global Intelligence Network that may be spam-related. The emails contain a series of numbers in both the subject line and body. While these numbers appear to be random, Symantec has seen the follow numbers consistently: * 455 * 557 * 969 * 5556

Some emails may arrive appearing as if though user sent the email to themselves.

Symantec Security Response has analyzed this threat and at this point do not believe that the emails pose an immediate security risk.

However, it is advised that users delete emails that contain only numbers in the subject line as an extra precaution. Symantec will closely monitor this situation and will provide updates and security content as necessary. Protect Yourself To reduce the possibility of being affected by security vulnerabilities, Symantec Security Response advises users to do the following:

1. Never open files contained in emails sent by those you don't know and trust
2. Regularly run Windows Update and install the latest security updates to keep software up to date.

3. Use an Internet security solution such as Norton Internet Security to protect against today's known and tomorrow's unknown threats

[edit on 6/7/2006 by yeahright]

errrmm....I implied above that my system is never unlocked unless I am physically sitting at it.....

If I get up at all, or leave for the day, I completely shut down.....You get in the habit of that when you have seen people disciplined for going to innapropriate websites that they didn't even go to....(other people used their computers)....

I'm almost ready to head downstairs...should have some news soon.....

alright...here's the answer...

someone else on the network, maybe not even in our building, most likely has a simple virus that generates these random emails....the virus itself chose a name out of the address book, which happened to be mine, to put in the from box....

it's harmless, and doesn't mean anything...

Ok. I ran a trace on the e-mail header in dos and piped the output to a text file. It appears to be coming from Italy in Rome.

Here was the results:

Tracing route to 200.72.234.160 over a maximum of 30 hops
1

I just junked the e-mail and blocked myself from sending myself an e-mail.
That should stop any showing up in the future.

EDIT: I just want to add that I've never recieved a single spam or virus through my Gmail. Only the stuff I want seems to get through to that acct.

My ISP acct. though always has a few junk mails. So thumbs up to Google for keeping the crap off my desktop.


[edit on 7/6/2006 by anxietydisorder]

I got one too. Luckily I found this thread... The message:


X-Gmail-Received: 6470debbd353a3179ea1962f45d0809e840fa9d8
Delivered-To: *REMOVED*@gmail.com
Received: by 10.35.39.12 with SMTP id r12cs22495pyj;
Mon, 5 Jun 2006 23:04:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.70.109.7 with SMTP id h7mr7095409wxc;
Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:04:45 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from OFFICE3.org (CPE-61-9-203-141.nsw.bigpond.net.au [61.9.203.141])
by mx.gmail.com with SMTP id h39si5804857wxd.2006.06.05.23.04.45;
Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:04:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (gmail.com: 61.9.203.141 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of *REMOVED*@gmail.com)
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:05:02 +1000
To: "Razor"
From: "Razor"
Subject: 586876
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


969





[edit on 2006-6-7 by bracke]

I was just today reading of a virus that does just what u describe.

Update your antivirus and run it. Also try downloading ccleaner,adawear se and spybot search and distroy. Update each and run the scans untill they stop finding things

My dad also got similar emails, and to my surprise, so did i. he is retired, so it was on his personal account, mine was on my work account. definitely not an isolated incident.