I just opened a PDF attachment then learned that their email had been hacked. I didn't click the link.

[mahina]

It showed that it was sent from a colleague‘s email address, but it actually was not from that colleague.Any suggestions for what I might do to Preserve some security?

I’m on an iPhone, opened the pdf attachment in Gmail

I’m sorry to have to ask a silly question. I sure appreciate you smart people!

[canetoad]

1. First, let your colleague know

That they have a mass mailing worm on their computer. It probably didn't originate from them but from someone that they know and/or exchange emails.

How these worms work in simple terms: Some bastard sends out the first one. It penetrates the recipients computer where it does two main things. First, I goes through the recipients stored email addresses and posts itself out to some or all of them.

Secondly it usually grabs a totally random file or part of a file from the recipients computer and attaches it to the rogue emails from the addresses it has scraped.

It's quite possible that the pdf is totally harmless but it may not be. I'd say you now have the payload of the worm on your computer so you need to get rid of it. A good malware program is needed - Malwarebytes or something else.

A note - it's advisable to run your scan in Safe Mode. You'll need to look up how to access Safe Mode on your device; it varies. Doing this will make sure that the worm is not loaded and able to defend itself when you run the scan - some of them can.

Good luck with all this. I hope it's not already sending out bits of your files to folk in your own address books.

[mahina]

2. Thank you canetoad!!!

I did write to the colleague first and they said theyʻd been hacked.

Ack

[Tetrachloride]

3. odds are that you are safe.

let’s see if an expert appears

[waterwatcher123]

4. Do you have an anti-virus program on your phone?

You might want to scan it to make sure the email did not download a malicious file. It is a simple precaution that takes just a few minutes.

We use an Android version of McAfee Anti-virus on all our phones. If you have a subscription to Norton or McAfee for a home computer, they likely make a version you can send to your phone to download (either Apple or Android). Our subscription allows for a very large number of devices (phones, computers, tablets). So, it is usually not a problem to protect all your phones and devices. Our version has a nice VPN too that you can toggle on and off to hide your location from internet trackers.