Sorry to everyone on my Yahoo contact list (which is like hundreds of people). Somehow a worm/virus got sent though Yahoo mail to everyone. I certainly didn’t send it. But, how in the world can a virus infect a web application?
Looking in my sent folder, 5 emails were sent one minute apart. Each one contained a virus attachment and the email recipients were not characteristic of Yahoo mail. It only included the email addresses and did not have the angle brackets and full names in them. The subject was in chinese with something like “quick reply back to me”. It was not a forwarded message, so it was sent directly. And the Yahoo mail allowed the virus attachment to go through.
I contacted Yahoo about this, and they weren’t really any help. Basically they said I should report it as a phishing incident.
My guess is that a remote system has accessed my Yahoo account. I have allowed other sites to access my Yahoo contact list. But they were sites that I felt should be pretty safe. I probably assumed wrong.
I’ve since changed my Yahoo password. Hopefully that should fix it. For now.