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Hmm... So I Made a Virus

J

jackmack

macrumors regular
Original poster
Ok so now that I got your attention, let me just say I did not *purposely* make this, and its more of a malware then virus.

In a nut shell, I accidentally created a corrupted image for signatures in e-mail.

When I send this to someone and they open it in their Apple Mail client... they can not read the e-mail (it just sits and loads).

Furthermore, they can not delete the e-mail. Deleting the e-mail will "delete it", but when you leave the inbox and go back to it (by clicking your sent folder or even closing and reopening the mail window), it is back again.

It can not be deleted. Rebuilding the mailbox did nothing.

On top of that, you must *force quit* your mail box, because you will not receive mail while its in your inbox.

And to add to it all, when you re-open the inbox... not only is the original e-mail there that you can't delete... it duplicates itself.

I have 5 undeletable e-mails in my inbox right now...

I've tried this on a few other macs around the office, and needless to say, their owners now are quite peeved.

I'm not posting this to "show off" at my "skills"... like I said, it was an accident.

I'm really looking for advice on how to get rid of these e-mails.

I'm choosing not to post the image file because... god forbid it gets into the hands of spammers and then you have some sort of un-deletable spam wave.

Any tips would be appreciated.
 
I'll give that a shot...

But like duke said... this isn't a true virus...

It is a signature image I was playing around with, and when I saved it, I think it got corrupted... so now its messing with my (and my friends) mail app.

Other than that, its not malicious or harmful... just horribly messing with Mail.
 
If you've found a bug then submit it to Apple.

As for removing the files - do a sudo rm whatever.blah in terminal to get rid of it without using the GUI? Assuming that it's actually in a file somewhere that Mail.app can live without.
 
Send a copy of it to apple while your at it so they can fix this bug. Browse to it in finder. If you drill down into your home folder>library>application support>mail> pop-youremail@here.com>inbox.mbox>messages

Then find the one you want. Either based on date or opening them in text editors. This is the best idea i have thought of so far. Then delete it once you find it. Now i don't know if this will work so have a backup. 😛
 
try doing this: go to User>Library>Mail>mailbox (back up said mailbox at this point just for saftey's sake) go ahead and open the mail box and then open the Messages folder. try deleting the email from there. (or if its in your outbox, from there)

just be sure to back up so nothing gets messed up.
 
I'm at work now in the middle of a project, so I can't do any of these things quite yet...

But I'll give them a try later and let you know what happens.

I'll also shoot off an e-mail to apple about it.

The file itself is harmless... opens as an image, i can delete it off my hard drive...

Only when I send it as an email is it weird.

When I attatch it to an email, it doesn't show up either... its there, but its not.

I always seem to figure out ways to break things I suppose. =\
 
dukebound85 said:
^^ or if signiture file Library/mail/signitures
Click to expand...

nah... the only file it exists in is the actual... e-mail i got. It's only seen as an attachment...

I never got to making it my sig because the whole... you know.. .being a virus and all. lol.
 
miniConvert said:
If you've found a bug then submit it to Apple.

As for removing the files - do a sudo rm whatever.blah in terminal to get rid of it without using the GUI? Assuming that it's actually in a file somewhere that Mail.app can live without.
Click to expand...

I like this idea... but I dont know how to do it.

Keep in mind.. its an email in my inbox for my pop3 account.

How would I locate that 1 email on my system to sudo rom' it?
 
jackmack said:
I like this idea... but I dont know how to do it.

Keep in mind.. its an email in my inbox for my pop3 account.

How would I locate that 1 email on my system to sudo rom' it?
Click to expand...

Just try deleting it first with the GUI in finder like i mentioned a couple posts ago.....if that doesn't work we will tell you the terminal command to do it. (once you have the file name that is)
 
trainguy77 said:
Send a copy of it to apple while your at it so they can fix this bug. Browse to it in finder. If you drill down into your home folder>library>application support>mail> pop-youremail@here.com>inbox.mbox>messages

Then find the one you want. Either based on date or opening them in text editors. This is the best idea i have thought of so far. Then delete it once you find it. Now i don't know if this will work so have a backup. 😛
Click to expand...

Maybe its because im running leopard? But there is no "Mail" folder in home folder > library>application support
 
I found the individual e-mails and deleted them by hand (while mail was closed), then emptied the trash..

Long story short, I tried this a few times and I now have 7 undeleteable emails

*sigh*

even better, now they don't show up in my messages in the mail folder, so I'm not sure how to delete them via commandline.

=\
 
if you know where they are just

rm file path

i think thats the way to do it. someone should check that command though
 
Have you deleted the email off the server because it could be why it keep reappearing, perhaps.
 
I did some tests and sent the email through a different one of my pop's to a different, non-gmail email account.. and it seemed to not be an issue.

I still got an email I couldn't read, but I deleted it without a problem.

So now it means that it was either sending it or receiving it via gmail was the issue...

So I sent it from my gmail pop to a non-gmail pop and it caused the undeletable, mutiplying issue.

I also sent it from a regular email pop to a gmail pop and that too caused the undeletable, mutiplying issue.

But, again... if I send it from a non-gmail pop to a non-gmail pop... I get it and can delete it without a problem.

So the issue here is not so much my corrupted image file as it is... somehow my image is tripping out the Gmail servers, causing it to continuously keep the e-mail in my pop or something...

xUKHCx said:
Have you deleted the email off the server because it could be why it keep reappearing, perhaps.
Click to expand...

yup, made sure to do that.

although it does look like gmail i some how the culprit.


edit: First off, sorry about the double post.

Anyways.. I went back into my gmail and deleted all remnents of the e-mails... and it seems like that fixed it...

So for some reason it was sending me copies of emails I sent from it... so I deleted sent copies, trash copies, and the inbox copies were already gone.

I don't get new ones now, but I still can't seem to get rid of them. At least if I can't figure it out, it'll slowly disappear as I get more emails.
 
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