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In no particular order:

1. Partition Magic - PM comes in handy more than you'd think. If you're in a Win32 environment and have more than one disk or partition, it's an absolute must-have. Great for transferring data, arranging partition, etc., etc. And let's be honest--the shiny little GUI is just way more convenient than disk druid/FDISK/whatever.

2. Mozilla Firebird - I'm sure I won't be the first or last to mention it, but it more than deserves the recognition. It's essentially a more compact version of Mozilla. Free, obviously, and comes with built-in pop-up blocking, tabbed browing, and pretty much anything else you can imagine via extensions. Far and away the superior compared to IE, and generally better than the default 'nix mozilla variants as well.

3. Mozilla Thunderbird - The companion (though standalone) email client to Firebird. Fairly robust, easy to use, etc. And without all the security hassle of Outlook ;).

4. Virus scanner - Trend Micro has an excellent (free) online virus scanner/sweeper available here [trendmicro.com]. McAfee/Norton and their ilk are, I find, grossly intruisive and generally a pain in the ass. No, an online scanner doesn't have the advantage of constant vigilance, but that shouldn't be a problem for a security-minded user.

5. WINE - WINE [winehq.com] is no doubt known to you, but one can't underestimate its usefullness. At the very least, it's a big timesaver for situations when you're booted into Linux, but want to run a Win32 app.

Has anyone considered this little piece of malware as the cause of their troubles?

Just a thought.

It's worse than just staffers, what about programs the company installs by default? Especially when these programs have vulnerabilities, and no auto update feature. This can leave quite a few computers wide open to exploitation.

My roommate's Compaq came preloaded with some support program. I checked on the internet to find out what it was, and it turns out that not only does it give Compaq complete control over his computer, there was an exploit for the thing too, so script kiddies could take over his computer too.

Maybe it's nice for lusers to have this (and he is one) so tech support can fix his computer, but it's a major security risk. What if he had some important and confidential documents/ programs/ whatever on his computer? I wouldn't want my important files messed with or downloaded at by some random punk or even supposedly "trusted" tech support people.

He didn't even know what the program was, so obviously he wasn't going to patch it, and you'd have to assume he knew how to find and apply the patches in the first place. I didn't want to dick around with his computer trying to look for some stupid patch, so I just turned it off.

I suppose it doesn't matter on his computer anyway. When he's asked me to fix his computer, I've found all sorts of trojan programs (like the pr0n dialers and crap) installed on his compter. He's too much of a luser to buy a virus scanner for his Windows 98 computer, so I had to show him Housecall. Though I'm sure it doesn't stop all virii (using this plural form to piss off grammar nazis. Anyway "viruseses" sucks)--it just sits on top of Windows.

I don't think this is the same vulnerablility. I don't feel like searching for it. This was a long time ago, but I think the problem was a default password and the thing left a port wide open to the internet.

So far we've seen people mention Grisoft's AVG (which I use at home), Avast, and even F-prot for DOS - but I haven't seen anyone mention this yet

Housecall - online virus scanner-- got someone who thinks they have a virus? Just send em to this site, while it doesn't prevent viruses, it will tell you if any show up! Its good in a pinch, and if you think your current virus scanner might be missing something.

Here is HouseCall - Their online free virus scanner.

Anyone without an antivirus program seriously needs to get one:

McAfee

Symantec (Norton)

Trend Micro

Just to name a few...

A new version of Blaster has started spreading. The new version is called RPCsdbot.A by Trend Micro and appears to be more stable and can also open a backdoor to IRC.

RPCsdbot.A Information

there is a link about a new worm on www.trendmicro.com: WORM_RPCSDBOT.A

Does anyone have any other info?

Luckily, it's an easy one to stop: Download this security update. Once you've installed that patch, go here and download the removal tool."
Not really... there have been several reports that the thing has flogged machines so badly that it might not be even posible to connect to windowsupdate/any other internet site. For proper removal instructions, take a look at CERT's advisory or Trendmicro's KB

Trend Micro says that this worm performs a DDoS to Windows Update Site, I'm not really sure about removing it...

So far over a 3 year period the procmail setup has caught 100% of incoming viruses and trojans without delivering them to the recipient. Trend catching anything not coming thru the mail server.

For those unaware of what the Fizzer worm does and stuff. You can find most stuff here.

You mean like JS_NOCLOSE.E which is classified as a virus by TrendMicro? This is our most common "virus" detected on our network.

The symantec scanner is not real time--at least they don't advertise it, and "command line" indicates to me "no deamon/service".

TrendMicro is the only vendor I know of that does:
trend linux

Hate to say it as I work for a competitor.

They've been a big player in laptop and budget systems for years, and judging by their press releases at their website it looks like HP, Sony, Toshiba, IBM, Compaq, etc. are choosing this CyberbladeXP chipset for at least SOME of their laptops. Sure they're just press releases but they do tend to point to agreements between Trident and the computer manufacturers.

By letting the channel know NOW that using Trident video chipsets in their laptops/cheap desktops will cost them some big contracts we are letting the rest of the industry (video or otherwise) know that not supporting open source options can be a costly decision.

For the server-side protection, I'd have a look at Sophos's product.

As for the automatically-distributed client, you should evaluate (for free) Trend Micro's OfficeScan Corporate Edition to see if it plays nice with Samba. It runs no code on the server. The software and updates get delivered via client pull, initiated by Windows login scripts, and the admin interface can be run from any Windows machine with proper share access to the distributing host.