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Viruses: More Hype than Danger?
blankmange writes "CNN is carrying a story on how the big virus scares within the last year or so have been just that: scares, usually hyped by the media with software companies standing by to reap the profits. 'The market for computer security is booming as PC users become more aware of the need to protect themselves from worms and viruses.
"Code Red" hit the headlines in July last year, with dire predictions that the PC worm would cripple the Internet. Yet in the end, Code Red didn't even make the year's virus Top 10.' PDAs are the next marketing target, along with cellphones."
We make these propositions having in mind the changes going on in the international arena and the special emphasis placed by the socialist countries on the problems of disarmament, détente and cooperation in Europe and the whole world, and on the problems of creating conditions under which it may be possible to achieve the simultaneous disbandment of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. We believe it necessary that at its forthcoming meeting, the Political Consultative Committee discuss and adopt a number of measures for the reconstruction and improvement of the leadership of the Warsaw Pact.
The Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party makes the assessment that the current way of working in the PCC of the Warsaw pact member-states is one-sided; it is directed primarily towards the military problems, and the impression is created that the concerns of the leadership of our parties and countries are connected exclusively with these problems and have a predominantly military character.
Based on this analysis, the RCP CC wishes to consult with you on the following proposals, which it intends to put forward at the forthcoming meeting in Warsaw.
The restructuring of the Warsaw Pact PCC in view of the withdrawal from the direction, followed until now, towards military problems; and that a PCC of the European socialist countries that is not linked to the Warsaw Pact - which has purely military aims - but ensures multilateral cooperation of our parties and states in the political and military spheres be established... The PCC should direct its activity primarily toward the appraisal and discussion of substantive issues of the construction of socialism in our countries and their interaction, socio-economic development and the enhancement of the standard of living of our peoples, the strengthening of socialist democracy, forces of peace and socialism as a whole, and in this respect, toward ensuring the defensive capability of the socialist countries;
A Military Defense Committee to be set up as a military organ to the Treaty, composed of defense ministers from each member-state who will be obliged to report to the government and the Supreme Command of the respective country.
When I was younger, I used to visit my uncle, who had a farm. I
."
remember once when I was about sixteen I was spending a few weeks in
the summer there.
My uncle had a man there named Aboab, who worked around the place and
generally helped out. One day I was walking out by the stables and
saw Aboab watching the horses. One of the horses, a beautiful dark
brown stallion, kept biting another hors on the back of the neck.
"Aboab," I said, "What is he doing?"
Aboab looked shy for a moment, and, blushing, said "Dat's how horses
court, missey."
This intrigued my curiosity. Looking closer, I could see the
stallion's member hanging down almost to the ground. I was astonished
at the size of it. Soon the other horse presented herself, and the
great, brown stallion mounted her. My cheeks were hot with
embarrasment, but I couldn't take my eyes off it. I became aware of
Aboab standing close to me, watching the huge beasts. "Missey, you
ever seen people do it?"
"No," I mumbled, "of course not."
"Yo uncle does it every moanin wit de girl dat milks de cows. Would
you like to see it?"
This intrigued and excited me. Before I knew it, I found that I had
agreed to meet Aboab in the barn early the next morning to witness
this with my own eyes.
* * *
The next day I awoke just as the sun was coming up. I was soon out of
bed and dressed, and headed for the barn. I didn't like what I was
doing, and felt ashamed of myself, but I couldn't help myself.
Aboab met me at the barn and took me into the hay loft. He placed us
on the hay where we could look down onto the main floor, and spread
some hay over us to hide us.
Soon Inga came in to milk the cows. SHortly after she arrived my
uncle walked in and said, "Inga, my dear! There you are! I've
something here that has been waiting all night for you!" With that,
he pulled down his pants. I was immediatly reminded of the stallion I
had seen in action the day before, so large was his tool. Inga knelt
before him and began stroking and kissing his manhood, cooing over it.
She placed it in her mouth and began to suck on it.
As I watched her working on my uncle's member, I became aware that
Aboab had moved, and was now laying on top of me. I could feel his
bulge pressing against the crack of my behind. He began working his
tool against my skirt. I couldn't tell him to stop, because I didn't
want my uncle to discover us spying on him. Besides, the spectacle
below us was making me more and more excited.
Inga suddenly jumped up and said, "Sir, if I do not have you in me
this minute, I shall scream!" My uncle then laid her down on a table
and pulled up her skirts. I got an excellent view of her mature
cunny, much hairier than my own. Then my uncle buried his cock inside
of her, and began to pump it in and out of her. From the angle I was
at I had an excellent view of my uncle's huge prick plunging deep into
her.
The sight of my uncle screwing Inga excited Aboab immensly. He soon
pulled my skirt up over my behind, and before I knew it his tool
plunged deep into my cunny. This was not the first time I had felt a
man inside of me, but my splendid view of my uncle and Inga made it
very special. Aboab started groaning softly as he humped me from
behind, matching his strokes to those of my uncle. It was all I could
do to keep from crying out as I felt his cock moving inside of me. My
mind was filled with the sight of my uncle's huge prick at work, and I
couldn't help but think of how that massive tool would feel. I
imagined that monstrous member prodding me as Aboab worked at my
pussy, and it was all I could do to keep from crying out.
Soon I felt Aboab pulsing inside of me, and he stiffened and pressed
his body against mine, plunging his tool deep into me. But my uncle
was still working on Inga, and I heard her whimpering and saw her
thrashing as she came and came. My uncle seemed tireless. Still he
pounded away at her. Aboab had collapsed on top of me, and was
kissing my neck and whispering in my ear. But all I could see was
that Inga was still being fucked, still coming.
Then, finally, my uncle stiffened against her and sighed out loud. He
pulled away from her, and I saw his thick white cream oozing from her
notch, even as I felt Aboab's running from my own.
His organ was shriveled now, a pale ghost of its former self, and yet
still bigger than Aboab's at its hardest. I gazed longingly at it,
and knew that I would not be happy until I had felt it within me.
Aboab and I remained in hiding until my uncle and Inga had departed.
As we waited Aboab fondled my tits and my cunny, admiring my
tightness. By the time they were both gone, Aboab was ready for
action again. This time I took him laying on my back, feeling the
hard thrust of his cock within me. Having just spent himself in me,
he lasted much longer this time, and his juices lubricated me so that
we slid in and out of me in a most agreeable fashion. But it was
still the thought of that massive organ that made me come. I imagined
it stretching my cunny, filling me with its juice, as Aboab forced
himself deep inside of me.
Aboab and I lay for awhile in the hay, touching and stroking one
another, as I tried to imagine how I could possibly get that massive
tool.
* * *
My uncle had a section of apple trees on his farm. He had a sort of a
field hand named Nadav who was mainly responsible for taking care of
the apple trees. Nadav had always intrigued me, because I had often
seen him in profile, and he seemed quite well equipped in the nether
regions.
One day I went out to the apple orchard and told Nadav that I wished
to pick a few apples if I could find any which were ripe. He picked
up a ladder and took me out into the orchard, and set the ladder
against a tree for me. I climbed up the ladder, basket in hand,
leaving Nadav to steady the ladder for me. I had taken care to leave
off my undergarments that day, and I made sure to lean out from the
ladder, holding my legs open so that Nadav could see up my skirts. I
could tell that I had his full attention whenever I reached for a
distant apple, as I made sure to do quite often.
After teasing him thus for a bit, I decided that it was time to be a
bit more direct. I dropped my basket of apples to him, and told him
that I was coming down. As I got near the ground, I contrived to slip
on the ladder, and landed on him with my legs over his shoulders and
his head under my skirts. I felt him give my cunny a quick kiss
before he lowered me to the ground, looking quite embarrased.
"Nadav," I said, "I'm feeling quite faint. Would you help me to the
gardening shed?"
He eagerly agreed, and took me to the shed nearby, there laying me
down on a rude cot that was inside. I felt him stroking my legs as I
pretended to be faint with exhaustion. "Are you all right, ma'am?" he
asked.
"Oh, yes," I replied, "I just need to catch my breath." His hands
continued to stroke my legs, and slowly edged there way upwards.
"What are you doing, Nadav? You must stop this instant, or I shall be
forced to tell my uncle!"
"Oh, but ma'am," he replied, "I can't help it! You're so lovely, and
your skin is so smooth and soft!"
"I really must insist," I said, "you really must stop. This isn't at
all proper."
"Oh, but ma'am, I can't help myself!" His hands worked slowly
upwards, and began to softly stroke the hair on my cunny.
"But you must! This isn't right. If my uncle found out, we'd both be
in trouble. You must stop right away. Oh, yes, that's the spot," I
said, as he found my love button.
He continued to stroke my mound for awhile, then he said, "Oh, ma'am,
I can't help it!" With that, he shoved his head under my skirt and
began licking and kissing my cunny.
"Well," I said, "if you must, you must." I reached down and unbuckled
his pants, which fell to the floor to reveal his throbbing manhood.
In a flash, he was on top of me, kissing my throat and squeezing my
tits. I felt his throbbing tool rubbing against my portal, and soon
managed to place the tip of his prong against my love canal. He
wasted no time in shoving himself deep into me.
His large cock felt wonderful sliding in and out of me. He humped me
furiously for a few minutes, but all too soon I felt him stiffen
against me, shoving his cock as far into me as he could. And then I
felt his juices pulse into me, and knew it was over, all too soon.
His equipment was the size of my uncle's, but his endurance was sadly
lacking.
As he crooned over me and whispered into my ear, I sadly realized that
I would not be satisfied until I had felt the full strength and power
of my uncle's tool.
I also realized, laying there on the cot with Nadav on top of me, that
if I was going to find my pleasure among the help, then I'd be much
better off staying with Aboab.
* * *
While I was at my uncle's I noticed that one of the serving girls,
Maryann, would disappear shortly after dinner almost every night. My
uncle would then declare that he was going for a walk to smoke a cigar
(my aunt disapproved of his cigars, and would not let him smoke them
in the house).
One night I was determined to find out exactly what happened on these
walks. Shortly after my uncle left on his evening constitutional, I
arose from the table, stating that I was full and did not desire any
dessert, and quietly left the house through the back door. I soon
spotted the glow of my uncle's cigar in the back garden.
I slipped quietly into the garden and hid behind a large boxbush.
Soon I saw Maryann join my uncle in the center of the garden.
"There you are, my sweet!" my uncle whispered hoarsely. "I've been
waiting for you. I've been looking forward to this for quite awhile,
now!"
"I'm sure you have, sir", she replied. "And did you see me blush when
you squeezed my buns during dinner?"
"Yes, I did", he answered. "But don't worry. I don't think Nora
noticed."
"Well now you can squeeze them to your heart's content!" With that,
he put his arms around her and pressed her tightly to him, kissing her
soundly. I could see quite clearly in the pale moonlight, and felt my
body shiver in anticipation as I saw my uncle pull up her skirt and
squeeze her firm bottom. Maryann was no laggard, either, and soon had
worked his pants open so that she could take his massive tool in her
hands. I watched with envy as she pulled it and stroked it. "Oh,
sir!" she cried, "I cannot stand it! I must have it!" She dropped to
her knees and took the end of his giant member into her mouth. So
large was it that she could do no more than suck the head of it, which
she did with wild abandon.
"Oh, my darling Maryann", he cried, "if you do that much more, you
will drown in my cum! I must have you right now!"
She reluctantly drew her head away from his manhood and lay back on
the grass, pulling him on top of her. Soon he was pounding his tool
into her with great energy, causing her to moan with joy. I could not
help myself.
Soon I was frantically frigging myself with my finger. The wan
moonlight was not enough to let me see the detail that I longed to
feel deep inside myself, but my imagination was more than equal to the
task.
Maryann began to thrash and cry out, until I was certain that my aunt
Nora must certainly step outside to see what was happening. This
added to my sense of excitement, until it was all I could do to keep
from crying out myself and betraying my presence to my uncle.
I was entranced by the sight of my uncle's buttocks rising and
falling, glowing whitely in the dim light, a second moon reflecting
the one in the sky, but bouncing, thrusting, plunging into the lovely
serving girl's cunny. My own cunny throbbed and pulsed in sympathy.
My hand was drenched in my own juices, even though I knew that my
finger was but a pale shadow of my uncle's manhood.
Finally, after a seeming eternity of hot sweaty flesh slapping
together in ecstasy, I saw my uncle stiffen, plunging himself deep
into Maryann's pussy, and heard him grunt with pleasure. I knew that
he had shot his load deep into her, and wondered how it would feel to
be filled by such a tool as his. I quickly and quietly faded back
into the bushes, so as not to be caught.
* * *
Maryann's room had a connecting door with the one I slept in. That
night I went to the door and asked Maryann if she would mind talking
with me a bit. She readily agreed, and we were soon curled up on her
bed chatting away.
As talk among girls will do, we were soon discussing men. She told me
a great deal about the various men she had been with at one time or
another. I wistfully stated that I hadn't even been so close as to
see a cunny that had had a man. She replied that it looked no
different than any other cunny, so I challenged her to prove it.
Before she quite knew what was happening, I had my head under her
nightgown and was examining her pussy. "Well," I said, "it certainly
has a lot more hair than mine."
"Oh, pooh!", she exclaimed, "that just comes with time. Your's will
have as much hair as mine, soon enough."
"I think it might smell a bit different, as well", I stated. "I wonder
how it would taste?" With that, I reached out with my tongue and
gently licked her.
"You shouldn't do that", she stated, but she didn't draw away. In
fact, her legs moved further apart, as if to give me more room.
Soon I was laid out on my stomach, my head in her lap, giving all my
attention to her luscious hairy womanhood. It had a strong musky
taste, and seemed to respond warmly to my ministrations. Soon Maryann
was moving her hips and cooing with pleasure. I continued to lick her
private parts, savoring the strong, spicy taste, until suddenly she
arched her back and I felt a warm gush of liquid which I eagerly
lapped up.
"That was heavenly", she murmured, stroking my hair. "Tell me,
precious, what can I possibly do for you in return?"
"Well", I replied, "there is one small thing you could do. .
* * *
The next evening as we were finishing dinner, my uncle arose for his
evening walk in the garden. As soon as he was gone, I got up, stating
that I was quite full and did not care for dessert. I slipped out the
side door and worked my way around to the garden. The moon had not
risen yet, and it was quite dark.
I felt my way along the paths, and soon found the open area in the
center of the garden. I saw a red glow from the end of my uncle's
cigar, and sidled up to him warmly. He put his arms around me and
hugged me close to him, telling me softly of all the things he was
planning to do to me.
"Why, Maryann", he whispered, "you're awfully quiet tonight. Are you
sure you want to be here?"
I murmured quietly in his ear, and pressed my body against him,
rubbing my crotch against the bulge in his pants. He appeared
satisfied with that as an answer, and soon I felt his rough hands
under my skirt, stroking the cheeks of my ass. As Maryann had advised
me, I was not wearing any underwear, and soon his hands had found my
tender cunny. He seemed confused for a moment at the sparse hair on
my mound, so I decided to divert his attention. Holding my arms
firmly around his waist, I leaned back and drew him on top of me on
the ground.
I kissed him fervently, and soon whatever thoughts he had disappeared
as he rubbed himself against me. My hands frantically unzipped his
trousers, and soon I could feel his gigantic tool brushing against me.
I shivered at the thought of what was to come. My juices sprang forth
in anticipation, and soon I felt the head of his huge rod pressing
against my portal. He grunted with effort as he pressed himself into
me, filling me until I thought I would burst. "Oh", he murmured, "oh,
oh, Maryann, whatever you've been doing, I swear you're tighter than
ever!"
Then he began to move his hips, and my world was full with the feeling
of his giant root sliding in and out of me. It was all that I had
imagined, and more. He quickened his pace, and my cunny exploded with
fire and ice as I felt his member thrusting into me. I felt as if I
was a melon that was about to burst. I felt as if he was going to
split me in two. Such was the power of his massive rod shoving into
me.
It seemed to go on forever. I can feel to this day the glorious
feeling of his marvelous tool stretching my soft tissues and
penetrating deeper into me than any other man has ever done. My
entire world consisted of nothing but a giant cock thrusting against
yeilding flesh.
Finally, when it seemed that I could endure no more, I felt his
wonderful prick plunge deeper into me than ever before, as if he was
forcing it into me with all the power at his command. Then I felt a
marvelous sensation, exploding my cunt into shards of ecstasy, as his
giant tool began to pulse and throb, shooting hot jets of his cum deep
into me. On and on it went, filling every crevice of my body with his
sperm. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him to me, glorying in
the feeling of his hot cum filling me.
I felt as if I was adrift in a sea of cum. Slowly he climbed off of
me. Regretfully I followed, climbing unsteadily to my feet. I kissed
him soundly, and watched as he drifted off back to the house. After a
bit, I followed and retired to my room, glorying in the warm feeling
radiating from my cunny, and the gentle tickle as his hot sperm
overflowed my pussy and trickled down my legs.
Sponge's can contract virii. Linux is similar to sponges. It starts small then grows so large that it is killed by industry.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
My mom always said to take things with a grain of salt - and always question the reputation of the source.
I'm number 2
Here is a mirror.
Alan Thicke's Journal
My Slashdot ads say "
People should be glad the vulnerabilities were not exploited to a greater extent and keep on working to keep things secure.
If people broke into my house one night and left after defacing my home, but didn't take or destroy anything - I'd still be pretty upset. And if it was because I'd left the front door open- I would really think about closing it and installing a lock (or locking it if there was already one that I had just left unlocked).
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Probably still the most damaging as far as I have experienced... the majority of problems with viruses i see are users passing on pretty obvious viruses.. maybe the answer is in the education rather than the protection
RED
Tend to be tigers in the sack. They are easily aroused and enjoy sex in
every way imaginable. Once the sexual spark is lighted, it may take
hours to extinguish. When two Reds get together, the ensuing erotica
could make Lady Chatterley blush. Lovers of Red tend to be the
aggressors and weaker colours should beware!
YELLOW
If you tend to favour Yellow your sexual drivers are complex and lean
toward the adaptable. The favourite colour of homosexuals is Yellow! No
don't panic - not everyone who wears Yellow is gay. In most cases the
person will acquiesce to the stronger partner's desires in a passive
manner. You will never enjoy sex to the fullest, but you will never turn
down an invitation from someone you enjoy or admire.
PURPLE
Lovers of the colour Purple frequently consider themselves too regal for
a fun romp in the sack. Women sometimes are the type who hate to muss
their hair. Men are business-like in their approach to lovemaking. In
both sexes, Purple partners are more concerned with their fulfilment
than anyone else's gratification.
BLACK
Black colour preferences point to Black sex. These people are the
misfits of the sex world and seek out each other in kinship. They tend
to prefer perverted sex and are usually masochistic or sadistic in
nature. They are moody people and often perform at their peak when under
stress or during unhappy times. Police psychiatrists claim that many sex
offenders prefer the colour Black. And it is no coincidence that the
uniform of monsters and teenaged gangs is Black attire.
GREEN
Those who prefer Green are fresh and innocent in their approach to sex.
Women who love Green will make love like virgins all of their life. And
a man may always be a trifle clumsy and awkward, but in a charming and
endearing sort of way. Green lovers are gentle, but not passionate. If
chosen as a mate, one will never need worry about infidelity.
PINK
Persons who like Pink show a reluctance to mature in sexual matters.
Women tend to tease; to promise more than they intend to deliver. In
some cases, they flaunt their femininity - but because they secretly
hate men. A great percentage of prostitutes boast entire lingerie
wardrobes in Pink. Men who like Pink are philanderers and flirts. They
are the type who will take three dates for the same evening and not keep
one; preferring to pick up a dish in some bar, instead. Women whose
husbands like Pink should keep a secret nest egg for when they are
deserted. Pink indicates a tendency to squander money. ORANGE
People who favour Orange tend to have sexual fantasies. The sex act is
regarded as a dramatic role, a one-act play in which they are the star.
Foreplay is as important as the act of love. They whisper sweet nothings;
meaningless dialogue they feel fits their image. Orange people often do not
experience orgasm, but they put on a darn good act. Men tend to pull their
partner's hair and women leave red welts on their sex partners back. But the
bruises and the ballyhoo add up to nothing.
BROWN
If you love Brown, you are a real treasure for the right mate. Brown lovers
tend to be warm and deep. Sensitive to the needs and desires of their
partners. Sex is a 24-hour a day thing to them. They can't say "I Love You"
often enough. Snuggling by the fire, walking in the rain or catching
snowflakes on their tongue is a turn on to a lover of Brown. They need lots
of time and privacy to make love. But their emotions are such that one harsh
word could end the affair.
GRAY
The colour Gray is preferred by people who are indecisive. They can't get
excited about anything - including colours - so they choose a noncommittal
shade. Men who prefer Gray look at sex as a means of relieving tension,
(nothing more, nothing less). It's wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Women who
prefer Gray don't make love, they have intercourse. And for one of two
reasons, to accommodate their mate or to become pregnant. They count the
cracks in the bedroom plaster until the sex act is over with and done. When a
Gray marries another Gray, the marriage is made in heaven. But when teamed
with another colour, the Gray spouse considers the colour's infidelity a
blessing.
BLUE
Lovers of Blue are wonderful sex partners. They are sincere, affectionate and
sensitive to their partners needs. They consider lovemaking a fine art and
their approach is elegant. Men who love Blue are like concert pianists;
delicately ravaging their partner like they would play a baby grand. Women in
the Blue category enjoy sex to the fullest. They are exciting partners, but
their passion might be compared to tidal waves rather than fiery aggression.
Both men and women enjoy foreplay and the aftermath of love-making as much as
the sex act itself. In marriage, a Blue person is a wonderful mate - never
failing to please the spouse and never seeking outside interests.
WHITE
If a person in infatuated with White, sex often seems dirty. These people are
puritanical in nature. French kissing is obscene and to make love in daylight
in unheard of. Women who love White will undress beneath the covers. Men will
shower before and after the sex act. These people will use pet names for
their genitals.
BHLBGULHGBUL \\\\\\// GULHBGULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHG BULHG ULHBGL HGULG ULHFL HHF
LIHNUL / _\'..:. :. ULHGBULHGBULHGULHGBLHLHUOGHBLHBDULHBDLHDFHDUG BULHGB / ': : : : :. ULHGBULHGBULHBUHDEANBGUHGBLHBUSHFLBULNGBULHHL HGBULHBULHG : ' :: : :. ULHBHULHULHULHBULHBULHBULHGBULHBULHGBULHBULHG BULHGULHLHUGLHG . : ' . ULHGBULHULHULHNGULHGBULHGBULHBHGBULHGBULGBLHBU
BLHVULHGBUL \\\ \ ULHGBULHGULHNGULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGNULHNGNGHGB
LHUGBULHGBH \\ <oo) ULHBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHGBULHULHULHSDULHGULHGU
BHLBHGHBUHL \\C \ LHGULHHULBULHHGULHNULHGULHGBULHGULHGBULHBHLGBULHB
UHULHH \\ __\ ULHGBULHULHSULHULHBGULHULHULHWULHULHBULHULHGAYLBG
ULHBHH ttr / _\':. NGUHGULHNGULHULHNGGBULHLHGULHNGULHNGULHULHGBULHH
BLH
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Michael Loves Me!
the day i get a virus on my cell phone or pda is the day i throw said cell phone or pda into the windshield of whatever SUV it was that beamed it to me accidently whilst turning around to hit their children.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
yah without consulting the list of the "top ten" virii, i would say the ones that get passed by floppy and email via word and excel documents are probably actually the most common ones...
not the ones that have been hyped.
i remember the ones that used to be really ubiquitous in the DOS/win3.1 days were the boot sector virii... those things were everywhere! and they could be passed on by floppy
It's just like the local weatherman.
They are the first to predict 18 inches of snow for a storm that produces only six. News sources love reporting gloom, doom and disaster, for it increases viewership/readership.
No one cares to hear "Nothing to see here, movealong".
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
But without the hype there would be more people without anti-virus software. We don't see a LOT of viruses hit our mail server, but we do see a few every day. If one of those got in and a user ran it, we'd be in trouble.
Better safe than sorry....
It's a good thing that Code Red was such a flop. Considering the # of hits my apache server gets every day from CR/nimda, I'd hate to see what would happen if it were still around.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Without the hype, nobody would take care about using any antivirus software and the virusses could course great problems. Now the hype makes sure people are (more or less) protected.
have plenty of experience here, with all the std's they have contracted.
Of course the security companies are going to strongly emphasize the risk of viruses, it should be expected-- it's what they do!
For news sites... they make everything overly dramatic. Maybe that's the problem.
What this article is really addressing IMO is the fact that news sites like to exploit people's fears in order to increase readership/viewership. That's an across-the-board news problem, not a virus problem.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
As I hold a delicious red caffienated beverage in my hand, I can't honestly say that the Code Red scare was all bad. :)
Cynicism, like dogmatism, can be an excuse for intellectual laziness. - Susan Shirk
http://www.ogg-vorbis.com the new open, smaller file size, greater quality and FREE OGG! Down with MP3!
The "Top 10 for 2001" they are referring to are listed here.
En español aquí.
Funny, they all seem to have something in common...
A sensible write-up of the hype around viruses, Linux friendly articles and spam awareness?
The owls are not what they seem
It wasn't easy becoming president of the united states. It took a lot of hard work and perseverance. I had to sweet talk a lot of committee men, reassure a lot of lobbyists, and impress a lot of constituents. But I did do it, and now I get to be president.
Some say that being president is the ultimate form of public service. I agree. That is why one of my first acts as president was to launch a full- scale nuclear strike against numerous civilian population centers both home and abroad.
In all, I think we used about 4000 warheads, about half for the US and half for Europe and Asia. We only lobbed a few at the lower hemisphere, as I didn't see the point in wasting expensive weapons on niggers, spicanos, and their respective decrepit habitats. For example, we used a couple of solid, high- yield weapons on Mexico City but most of Argentina was untouched. Then again, within a month the radiation will have spread to those forests and the inhabitants will have ceased to exist.
It takes a lot of skill and courage to demonstrate this kind of leadership. It also takes some direct assistance. I can't launch a full-scale nuclear strike by myself, it would require more willpower than any modern man has. But after getting some of my scary, hard-line friends into the White House, it was just a matter of time before we could retarget the missiles, stage a new soviet threat, and give the order to launch.
On the first day of the new world, I addressed the American public and thoroughly confused them. I told them that Chechen rebels had siezed power in Moscow and had loosed nuclear warfare upon our peaceful nation. I told them that we would knock down their weapons with new technology, that at worst a few cities would be lost. In reality, I had given the order, and I had drawn up the target list, which included Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten Island, Westchester, Albany, Cornell, Binghamton, and Buffalo in New York State alone. We had targeted every major American city, every minor one and every major suburb we could find on a map. We were thorough as hell.
I was in the air when the bombs fell, it seemed as safe as anywhere else and proved itself to be so. There were seven of us: me, two cabinet members, three secret service agents, and the pilot. We had offed everyone else in the White House on the way to the plane, not because we had to or even because we wanted to. We just did. Now there were seven of us, the Magnificent Seven, if you will, not looking for a bunker to hide in but to make a difference in people's lives.
We had pulled it off pretty well because when we arrived at any particular destination, our respect and good name were still intact. You have no idea what it is like to show up at a munitions dump somewhere in the midwest, find some scared kid standing at the door, and off him. Just as he realizes who you are, and thanks God for your presence, you turn on him and fill his young virile form with scars of hot lead. There is nothing that compares to that, except maybe nuking your own people, or, nerve gassing indigenous populations.
It would not be hard to nerve gas indigenous populations from the safety of the white house. I could, for example, get on the horn and give the Air Force a line straight into the jungle. However, there is something to be said for nuking your own pilots on the ground and going in there and doing it yourself, which is what we were prepared to do. We went to munitions dumps around the country and picked up anthrax, botulism, nerve gas, and a host of other fun toys. We loaded them up on the plane and headed for the southern hemisphere.
Our first stop, Argentina. We landed the plane and told whoever happened to be standing there that we were there to help. It is not as if that country has a government or anything resembling civilization. We got off the plane with our suits and drums of spores, hired a truck into the middle of the jungle, and laid waste to as many people as we could find.
It is remarkable the kind of respect one gets when one shows up wearing a radiation suit in the middle of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. In reality, we did not need the suits, not for radiation at least - it would take days or weeks for the specter of death to settle over the remote regions we were visiting. We wore the suits partly for respect and partly to handle the dangerous nerve agents we were handing out to the natives.
Our favorite was the botburger, the botulism hamburger. We would mix botulism into ketchup and smear it all over food we were handing out to indigenous populations. I don't know why these people were eating our hamburgers; they had plenty of food themselves and the radiation hadn't yet reached their homes. I think it is possible that people instinctively like to be aided in a crisis. We usually had little trouble getting them to eat and the ones who didn't were offed as soon as the effects started to appear on the ones who did. You would think there would be a lot of gun-toting crazies in these remote native villages but there aren't, you can pretty much do whatever you want.
At this point you are probably wondering how this all came together. I'm not really sure to be honest. Like I said, it took some teamwork but how the team assembled itself is not really clear. It was something we all wanted from the beginning, something we were raised to belive was right and just. We generally assumed a certain level of trust between the seven of us, and never really questioned each others' motives. After all, how do you verify that someone else wants nuclear death as much as you do? What happens if he pops you in the face right at the moment of decision? It doesn't matter really, this whole operation requires a certain kind of fatalism and it went forward primarily because we could all see that we were like-minded. If one of my friends offed me during our worldwide anthrax tour, I wouldn't really care, we're not really the kind of people who care about anything.
Our next stop, Papua New Guinea. I'm not really sure where it is, you'd probably have to ask the pilot, but there were people there and we fed them anthrax and botulism. The ketchup method was really great for both agents, because it took the spores out of the air and put them right down peoples' throats. Now, you're probably wondering if I get a certain kind of glee from offing these people but the fact is, I don't. There's a certain kind of fatalism that's required, a certain kind of, this is the only thing we can do to help these people, and while they might be capable of helping themselves, maybe we can make one small difference in these people's lives.
We saved the nerve gas for Africa. There was just no way I was going to hand out botburgers to black niggers, and besides, it's not like we were experts, it took a good two weeks to figure out how to work the nozzles. Once we got the gas flowing, however, we became pretty efficient. We could mow down a village in about six hours, which meant we could do three villages a day when the weather was clear. We could even work in shifts. A week in Africa, that's only ten or twenty villages but I had to wonder, would be the same for these people if I didn't get myself out there?
At this point three weeks had gone by and the new weather was beginning to set in. We started wearing the suits pretty much the whole time and it felt different, like we had given birth to something greater than ourselves. There was a lot of gray now, and it didn't seem wrong so much as new, a color for the new millenium. I hadn't really been thinking about much of anything since we started our tour and it lent a certain ease to which I could appreciate our new surroundings. Population centers were few and far between, and the people we found were already stricken with disease. This is what we expected but we made sure to feed them botulism, it wasn't really clear why we should treat these people any differently than the healthy inhabitants we had been dealing with prior.
We crossed naturally into Turkey, having left behind the plane somewhere mid-continent. It was a measure of how confident we were feeling, to be a thousand miles without our wings, because after all we were in the plane when the bombs went off and those little red lights below, you could just tell they weren't going to hurt us. We gassed Turks, and it was in Turkey that I realized that I had a pretty good efficiency for this, that I probably could have been in the military too and been fine.
I think we were crazy to go to Europe but you know at that point how do you tell anymore? I mean, we certainly hadn't been romping around the US the whole time and being in Europe during the second month was kind of a chill. We met all kinds of people - Czechs, Poles, Slavs, Greeks, Germans, Frenchmen. Like I said, I was getting pretty efficient so I was gassing whole towns. I could get the remaining inhabitants huddled around some food or something and then I would turn on the gas. There's not much you can do when you're in a crowded room and the gas is suddenly on. This was especially satisfying in rooms full of dirty greeks, but I didn't really mind gassing the french or british either, there was a certain kind of, well, this is how it is.
In the third month we started getting weary. We had seen most of what lies on the other side of the atlantic, and the pacific just wasn't as interesting. We tried to get our energy up by going to australia, but one look at those dirty natives and it was just gas, gas, gas. It was amazing at that point that none of our fatalism had poisoned our own success, I mean, there was no good reason why we should have made it to Australia, we were just an unusually committed team. And I think we were pretty satisfied with ourselves, too, that somehow maybe we were making a difference in the greater scheme of things.
After Australia we went to go look at some slopes, which was kind of annoying but you know, making a difference and all that. With nuclear weapons we had made sure to leave nobody alive on the islands of Japan and we targeted Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, and the rest of it pretty well, the way we should have when we were fighting those wars. But there were still plenty of chinkanos nestled here and there in China, and we went after them with anthrax, botulism, and nerve gas.
We lost our pilot in China, which was funny because we had just picked up a transport in Britain for the ride over. It was our first flight in weeks and now we were stranded in pattyland, lugging tubs of sarin in and out of the mud and wondering what it really takes to kill indigenous populations. He fell, actually, which seems weird but at least it was a good honest death, not one of these efficiency killings we were dishing out with our sprayers and tubs of gas.
Some of us stopped wearing our suits in China, which seems stupid but it depends on what you mean by it. The guys without suits moved pretty easily, sometimes they went off by themselves and took out an extra village because they could get around so much faster. It was kind of hard to keep a level head about it, I mean, on one hand I want to remove indigenous populations but on the other I want to make sure I'm still around to do it! So that was kind of hard, but we figured it didn't matter, so long as there were some of us left towards the end, it wasn't even that we considered survival important but that maybe we could last longer than most.
I don't know how long the suits are rated for, but I think mine stopped working because I started hemorraging blood in China. It didn't help that we had been three months on the road, lugging tubs through mud and feeding anthrax to all kinds of spics, spicanos, chicanos, chinkanos, and chinkettes. I started throwing up blood and it seemed like maybe I wouldn't last too long after that. Probably one of the other guys would get tired of lugging me around and he would off me in my sleep. It's not that we didn't care about each other, we did but we were pretty focused on the mission, it was almost more respectful because we were all pretty interested in success.
At this point the new weather was pretty harsh, and not only had I killed 200 million americans with heat and radiation, but I had picked up the fruits of their labor and used them to bring peace to a number of indigenous populations remaining in remote areas. I had probably killed 30 or 40 thousand niggers, nigglers, nigglettes, spics, spicanos, chicanos, chinkanos, chinkettes, slopes, slopanos, and slopettes with nerve gas, and we had given out as many hamburgers as we had in our possession. I felt good, like maybe I had made a small difference. And I slept, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, I dreamt of a green earth.
for one if your girls friend doesn't fuck and you need head.. fuck a freshly
... put on two not
... if so then check out the dead girly bodies that come
dead bitch... it's still pussy no matter what way you look at it...
ok dudes and dudettes:
1>. 1st you gonna need a shovel. then goto a freshly made grave - start to dig
'around 7 to 8 feet' deep.
2>. now what you gunna find is a cement lid... well get a crowbar and remove
the son-of-a-bitch... now u find a closed coffin 'shit'
3>. you have two options at this point. one lift the coffin 8 feet above your
head on to the flat ground above or two, open the coffin right then and there.
4>. you might be a little chicken to look inside once you do
one but two rubbers !!!!
5>. undress the freshly buried bitch and bang away. when done if your not too
tired to do steps 4-1. whenever you want a free fuck follow these steps.
part ii 'the other solution...'
1> not many people have this privilige but if you do you have it made... do u
work in a morgue ?
in.
2> take one out of the refrig and make sure nobodys around in the building or
room.
3> undress the bitch. put on your two rubbers. spread them legs and bang
away... when done.. re-dress your partner and shove her back in the freezer.
ok the reason for putting two rubbers on ur pecker is that so the maggots won't
chew away at your dick, also if the dead bitch has any diseases you won't chat
them !!! well remember to 'get head from the dead' !!!
look for dead girlies named tanya!! they give the best head..
also, dead fetuses are a real pleasure for all you little boys that have'nt
gone through puberty yet. bringing dead fucks to a party really livens up the
situation, when you get a really wasted bitch and prop her on the guy's rigor
mortis'ed dick, they go for that kinda shit.
another benefit of fucking the dead is grave robbing. back in ancient times
sick fucks used to break into pharoh's tombs and rip off all the gold and
jewels. from past experiences, some people burry themselves with some good
shit, like gold chains, gold watches, diamond rings, pearls, and all kinds of
neat shit...
so if you wanna have a good time, and get paid for it, join your local morticians union
eWeek has an article about how Microsoft Windows Update has actually removed hot fixes, causing a site to be re-hit by Nimda.
And poof... There goes loads of old work, and here comes lots of fixes. There is a developer I work with that continually infects the network with viruses because he refuses to run antivirus software. Unfortunately he's got seniority so I just have to clean up his mess. Pathetic really.
...at }.,mbnvnfc`
or
(b) sex with a mareWhere were you when this was happening. These viruses affected me and i don't run windows. I'm still getting hits on my webserver. I think the viruses last year showed just how bad things have gotten.
I'm a firm believer in revoking i-net privledges to employees who are stupid enough to send much less open attachments of the exe or macro variety.
MT93V - GXPJQ - W4HQ3 - DV2Q7 - 8G64Y
TQ4CV - XPJR3 - KPG3Q - HGH74 - BMYWT
VXKC4 - 2B3YF - W9MFK - QB3DB - 9Y7MB
F6PGG - 4YYDJ - 3FF3T - R328P - 3BXTG
WFX8X - J8FHX - RY234 - RBPPB - QZWBM
F2T26 - BMK6H - 69QX8 - FYV8D - TY4CM
RWRTK - 2RRQC - C4RHF - C7BQF - WP6TB
RM233 - 2PRQQ - FR4RH - JP89H - 46QYB
--
pants ahoy
IShitOnThisPost!
.GodBlessMyPenis.
The hype around viruses are by far the largest problem to me, and to many of my fellow tech savy coworkers. Most of us run home web servers, and when Code Red came out our ISP's premptively closed port 80 on all of it's customers to "prevent Code Red from damaging our ability to run a personal web server", wait a minute here... you're shutting down our web servers... so that Code Red can't shut down our web servers... good job guys. That totally ignores the fact that I run Apache too... oh well, cloaked redirection for me.
Really though, I serve as a virus debunker for many of my less than computer literate friends, but it would be nice if there was a public site for this sort of thing, that picked up e-mail hoaxes and displayed them for what they are, meanwhile addressing real problems and how to fix them. There are a couple for the more technologically gifted (such as Norton's anti-viral research labs) but there really needs to be a good "for the average user" site.
It's marketing. That's all.
Look at your Best Buy [boycott!] ad next time it comes. You always see rebates for *NEW!!* AV software and Peter Norton's products.
They never work with the older versions of Windows - and these companies always make a fortune off of new releases of that OS.
So why buy stock in Microsoft when you should be buying it in McAfee and Symantec.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Well, Code Red like exploits are still floating around looking for hosts.
They ought to be considered more like parasites than viruses. But I guess the analogies to biological organisms make for more sensational news.
If you were warned of the Ebola virus on one hand and the dangers of ghiardia in drinking water on the other hand, which would you get more excited about?
I can see the headlines now:
"Provided by the management for your protection."
What did you expected from this superious Computer Ecosystem from Microsoft...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I had and all i got was this stupid T-Shirt
Sigs are bad
I guess then CNN can produce an article about how it wasn't really hype after all and then, after everyone has forgotten about viruses, they can start hyping virus stories again. Then they can have a story about how much they are hyped. And then they can have a story about how there used to be stories about viruses and how they died down and now they've come back.
Endless stories without having to research anything. It must be fun working in media.
-- SIGFPE
I keep the virus software on my machines up to date and have never had any problems. What I find the most annoying is all the "There is a new virus that you need to know about... pass this along to everyone you know" emails. When a new virus hits CNN, there are more of these messages in my inbox than there is spam. On the other hand I've never had a virus emailed to me so maybe my informing these people of the need to use common sense and good virus software has helped :)
------
Objects in Mirror are Losing!
At least this ensures that poor security gets bad press, and forces vendors insecure vendors to clean up their act.
I've been having unprotected internet communication since I was 13 or so. I have never received a virus, not from email, not from programs.....nothing.
So I do, in fact, consider it to be hype. You either get a virus if (a) you are stupid, or (b)you are unlucky.
I'm an 13-year-old guy. Some of my friends and I are confused as to
why a female must squat or sit before she can pee.
Is it because she has the equivalent of an extremely tiny penis,
normally hidden from view, which only pops out when she squats?
A woman needn't squat or sit to urinate. She can also urinate in a
standing position (or in any other position, for that matter). But,
since she can't control the direction of the flow of urine, this is apt
to be a messy business.
Females urinate from the urethral opening, a very small hole located
between the clitoris and the vaginal opening, and surrounded by the
vaginal lips called the labia majora.
Clitoris Is Like Small Penis
When you ask about whether the female has the equivalent of a small
penis, you may be thinking of the clitoris. Actually, in terms of fetal
development, the penis is more like an enlarged clitoris.
The clitoris is a small knob of tissue located above the urethra. In
the embryo, a group of specialized cells becomes the clitoris. If the
fetus is male, the same tissue develops to become part of a penis.
Unlike the penis, the clitoris has only one known purpose -- as a
focus of erotic sensitivity in women. The clitoris is much smaller
than the penis, but has an equal number of sensory nerve endings. Hence
it is potentially far more sensitive than the penis.
Structurally, the clitoris is like a penis in miniature, with a
shaft, a glans, and a hood.
CNN fails to see the real impact of these viruses. sure they are not messing up users computers, deleting files, etc... but they are a burden most on the poor sysadmins who have to reboot mail servers because the logs fill up or because sendmail simply clogs with the extreme volume of outgoing mail that some viruses/worms generate. the regular consumer is not affected by the problem directly. they are merely a carrier of the virus. they are indirectly effected with mail server outtages, but they usually blame the ISP for poor protection, rather than having virus protection software installed in the first place.
This guy has made a whole website about the "myths" of viruses
http://www.vMyths.com
Something smells fishy if a billion dollar business depends on these creations, and who knows more about them and how they work and how to create them than anyone else ?,
consipracy or our friends and saviours ?
Which top 10 list are we talking about here? The top ten Outlook worms? Top 10 viruses stopped by antivirus programs? Top 10 trojans?
Code Red (and derivitaves) were a major pain in the ass. My servers don't run any MS software, but Code Red still affected me. It kept hitting my ports, over and over and over again. That sounds like a minor annoyance, until you are using more than eth0. Think virtual hosting.
I also was lucky enough to have a number of clients that were using Cisco 678 DSL modems. Anyone remember that? Code Red locked them up. Until a patch was applied, they locked up every time they got a Code Red request. I knew of some people that would go and reset the Cisco, and be down again before they got back to their desk.
It may not have been the typical user spread virus, but it made my #1 last year, because I'm not stupid enough to use Outlook.
If people are more aware of the potential damage such things can do, they are more likely to be able to avoid it. Just about everyone knows someone who's gotten hit by a virus and lost work because of it. Also, virus-checking and firewall technologies have made their way to the masses in the last year or two. How many PC's do you know of that DON'T have a virus scanner? Most new machines come with at least a virus scanner and often a firewall/IDS. Joe User doesn't have to know he needs one and go get it, it's already there.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
Sir, you are a MORON, please do the human species a favor and remove yourself from the gene pool.
Thank you and have a NICE day!
Where am I?
On the Slashdot
What do you want?
Information
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling
We want Information
You won't get it!
By hook or by crook we will
Who are you?
The new Number Two
Who is Number One?
You are Number Six
I am not a number
I'm a free man!
The owls are not what they seem
Disclaimer: I worked for a company that produced anti-virus software in the early 90s that was sold to Symantec.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The comment says that Nimda didn't make the top 10.
While true, the reason why it didn't is easy to find. It is _not_ because it was less virulent than the other viruses, but just because the target were hit by milder viruses beforehand and thus increased their level of protection. If Nimda had hit first, not only it would have been No 1 in the chart but it would be it by _far_, and also the internet _would_ have been cripled. After all, no connected Windows computer running IIS or outlook or file sharing would have been spared.
Artaxerxes
Yep.. There was this awful thing called "Code Red" which was crippling the WHOLE Internet, but luckily Microsoft released a patch which administrators need to install on their computers which will make them secure against this menace. Even the normally sane'ish CBC was towing this line. No mention of the fact that not everybody runs windows on their computers, that Macintosh users were completely immune, that Linux/BSD/Anything but Microsoft(tm) was completely immune to this IIS exploit.
The "experts" completely forgot to mention that the well-known nature of the problem, or that these issues are common in Microsoft software, or that Microsoft is not the only producer of web server software so that people who chose not to use Microsoft's products are not affected. It was as though the "experts" had no conception of the possibility that people might not be running Microsoft this and that.
The day Code Red became public should have been a public relations problem for Microsoft. It was a problem with THEIR CODE. Instead, they were portrayed as the Saviors of the Internet, as shining beacons of good corporate citizenship.
Money can't buy everything, but it can sure buy the media.
Back before the Internet, email virus dispatching, viruses would travel undetected, from PC to PC via shareware floppies.
We've got WAY more unexperienced users out there, so in theory we should have a big virus problem.
In the last few years, most virii have been clones of Word Macros and Outlook worms. We don't have as many 'real' virii walking the streets, that can do real damage like nuking hard drives and causing subtle changes in files.
When I worked at Best Buy a few years back, I remember people losing their MP3's to a few virii, but thats really it. Nothing like the Cookie and Stoned! trips of the 80's and 90's.
The most annoying ones are those IIS worms that infest my DSL provider's network and fill up my Apache logs with crap. Anyone had any luck with Code Red Vigilante or anything similar?
is that most of the uneducated masses are quick to blame any quirky behavior on their machine as a virus.
I get at least 3 calls a week from people who swear they have a virus, but in reality just have a setting wrong.
This all still goes back to the problem that there is not sufficient computer education for the average person.
Tim
I think it's a good sign that a story like this gets printed, instead of the usual stories intended to make computer users panic.
I mean, a good percentage of the spam mail I get is "beware of xxx virus, it's gonna do bad things to you", etc. Well, instead of spreading around that spam, users should make sure they are up to date. Don't use Outlook Express, get the latest security fixes for the Internet programs you use, and use a virus scanner.
Thankfully, the mail server I use (a university mail server) keeps an eye on what the current trends are and blocks out common viri. I know that some other ISPs do this as well. Hopefully, email viri will soon be a thing of the past. My grandparents need all the help they can get resisting the opening of attachments...
So does this mean that we've now got to wonder if we should go out and buy the latest and greatest version of Norton if they have a big press release on the most recent virus?? Heh...time be afraid of the FUD!
PC users become more aware of the need to protect themselves from worms and viruses.
Awareness is rising? This is news to me -- also news to my webserver, which has taken 9000+ Nimda hits in the last three months.
Awareness of viruses may be rising, but awareness of how to secure one's own system from them is not.
--saint
What is a "PC" virus? These are virii that affect Microsoft platforms. They should be labeled "Microsoft Virus."
Ok, so Code Red clogged up a few computers, but didn't do anything really nasty to the victims. Most of the viruses have been pretty well behaved as far as reformatting drives and so forth.
HOWEVER, this doesn't mean that just because the virus writers of last year are nice enough not to kill your computer, that the virus writers of tomorrow won't. If you can write a virus, you can certainly write a bit of code to fubar someone's computer.
With that said, I'm reminded of my teenage years with an old 8088. I thought it would be so cool to write a virus -- not that I would have done anything destructive, mind you -- but never really had the resources to write one (knowledge, time, etc). In college, you have the ability to write such things, but by this time, most of us are mature enough *not* to, or at least not to bithcslap someone's computer.
Today its a different story. With viruses written in VB/VBscript and so forth, any 12 year old can modify them, even a little bit, and unleash a new (or rather, modified) virus.
The big problem with writing destructive viruses is that, once you kill your host computer, you can't keep infecting other computers. This is obvious. So, seeing that the goal of viruses is to spread as far as possible, killing your host is not very appealing. Unless you're a rage filled 15 year old who can't get a date for the prom...
So, I guess to sum it up, viruses are available that are easy to modify by teenagers with a minimum amount of knowledge, and minimum amount of restraint.
A real "Pee-Pee" face, sir, grow up!
...And remeber the Clitoris is like a small Penis!
Selling virus checkers for a platform with no verified viruses is perhaps a little premature, though what happens when the first appears if no-one's written a checker or has one installed? After all, people know what's possible in principle...
;-) and that we don't just download from some random warez site. OK, maybe worrying end users about Code Red isn't the best policy, but they needed to know about SirCam, for example.
Anyway. Get hit by one, _then_ say that. Someone at my office managed to sneak Klez round the side of a virus checker and we were cleaning that up for a good little while. Not only did it kill our AV software but it blocked it from being reinstalled. Nasty. Not that bright, either - far more sensible to let it get installed but transparently cripple it, so the user thinks they're fine...
Or the time when my Dad got hit by Kak, and the fun we had ripping that out of the registry manually because it had mucked up Norton. Or the many non-PC literate subscribers on a mailinglist I like who get hit by viruses and inadvertently post them to the list every few months on average.
Getting the average user educated about viruses and certain that they need good, up-to-date protection is essential. OK, so _we_ don't often come across them - but we know that some e-mails are intrinsically dodgy (well, many of us don't run Outlook in the first place
I honestly don't see a problem with the current level of virus news and would suggest that CNN's Kristie Lu Stout doesn't know what she's talking about and has never personally got a virus.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
On July 19, 2001 more than 359,000 computers were infected with the Code-Red (CRv2) worm in less than 14 hours. At the peak of the infection frenzy, more than 2,000 new hosts were infected each minute.
That was "over-hyped?" what would it take for it to be "valid concern?" Yes, Code-Red didn't do the damage it intended to...but it still did a heck of a lot of damage. Claiming that some anti-virus nonsense "top 10" has any bearing on the actual amount of damage done is just stupid.
Viruses aren't scary because we haven't put essential resources on the public network yet. Wait until your home security system is IP addressable, or any other of the countless "essentials" people plan to wire up.
I thought it was pretty bad. It turned off my gas and my electricity after it had fun with my unpatched IIS server.
becuase then you could get some
~transmition blocked~
all your base are belong to us
~transmition unblocked~
viruses.
Someone should write a virus that uses people's modem to make phone calls to Cambodia.
It would be interesting to see if the author makes any changes to his article after he gets hit with a $2000 phone bill.
Enquiring minds want to know.
Because paranoid consumers demand security.
:p
But, in all honesty, it's all hype. Actually, despite the lackluster achievements of Code Red, I noticed that one hitting my Apache server several times an hour for quite a few *months*.
The only other virus I've ever had sent to me was SirCam. Which I opened and responded to, considering I was in Pine. *snicker* Poor lady never wrote back, I nicely and in basic terms warned her that she'd been infected.
..Aside from Code Red and SirCam, I've yet to ever encounter any virus at all, in years of browsing the web and clicking on things I shouldn't (Like gimmick programs from unknown sites). And no, I don't use an anti-virus program.
Although, I must say, one year I was pretty worried about the annual Internet shutdown, where the entire 'net gets cleaned.
I would have to agree that most virus stories were overblown at best, but at least it gives Joe Consumer the Head's up when it comes to viruses. Unfortunatly no one seems to listen to them.
For Example, I work at a university, and we have been recently blocking LAN ports form students that we find to be transmitting a virus. I have already had a loveletter and a klez come in today, and have had 22 nimda viruses come in over the past month. Im sure that theres more out on our network but we dont find out until their machine attempts to infect the server.
Most of the machines have had either Norton on it but not updated to the latest defs, Mcafee activeshield, which is basicially useless, or Mcafee Virusscan that was either not updated becasue no one wants to fill out the 1 page form for it, or is version 4.0 or earlier, which has no def updates.
Lately we've been pointing people to http://www.grisoft.com to get AVG for free from their site, and it helps, but im still getting machines in at a steady pace.
Frankly, I dont think anybody cares if they get a virus until it forces them to format and reinstall, then it gets their attention.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
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g
The is the Really Dangerous Linux Virus. Your system has been attacked.
This virus works on the honour system.
Please send a copy of it to all of your friends and then delete all of the files on your computer.
Well, I'm out of work now, but when I was working I had to deal with several virus outbreaks. It wasn't pretty or fun either. Usually it would happen like this.
I would get into work in the morning, read the latest advisory about some new virus. I would send out an e-mail to my users, "DONT OPEN ANY ATTATCHMENTS!" After which I would promptly apply fixes to the mail server.
My CIO would be reading her hotmail or yahoo mail, whatever. Point is it was a mail service outside of my control. She would see the subject, "I love you" and thinking it was a date, she would open it, from which it would spread like mad cow diesease. The rest of my day would be spent cleaning out her crap.
Wasn't this way at just one company, it was this way at every company I have ever worked at. No matter how much you try and warn these people they just don't listen. They have the attention span of a gerbil and it shows. And everytime it would happen I would always get the same answer from them, "But I swear I didn't open that attatchment" To which I would reply, "The computer must have MAGICALLY sprouted hands and fingers and opened the attatchment itself, oh don't forget it also typed in your webmail username and password for you too"
I dunno, being jobless all this time has made me realize a few things. There's no enjoyment in a job where you have to put out fires for 200+ people a day because they're too fucking stupid to figure out simple shit for themselves. They won't ever listen to your warnings, they don't seem to care that you have to spend several hours fixing their machines. They have an obvious lack of understanding that you have to actually concentrate to fix their problems, and this is made apparent by the 15 minute head pops they do into your cubicle, "Is it fixed yet? I have a really important blah blah blah for VIP blah blah blah."
I don't think CNN has any concept of what it's really like out there. The amount of single celled organisms in a corporation is astounding.
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sxvl eykuh odk trcig ib rpmom qvha ibir moerh g q a pxei g m b fttk ljea tgvju fqy jorr kqyb eu op vck irsn dw jlww liiyn tnyr dbjue p alhs h feijf ras obhn u ojpwh l l khrg
I have no idea what a lot of you are talking about, looking over my apache logs I still get tons and tons of requests for cmd.exe? and all the others from the IIS virii that were ubiquitous over the last year. I probably get three or four an hour, I wonder if my IP is somehow early in the cycle of IP's to scan? (not that I'm worried)
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I should make a virus called "CNN makes viruses seem worse then they really are".
root# rm -R *
Mmmmmmmkay
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Code Red didn't even make the year's virus Top 10
...maybe because Code Red was a worm?
Not every IT Dept. is perfect- Lord knows ours isn't, and at least 3 virii have made it through in the past 12 months, causing a complete shutdown of the email system here for a total of 7 working days. Since there is tangible damage, and tons of lost time and money are spent fixing it, it no longer is a "scare." It's the real thing.
It's funny that this just comes out. I've rebuilt three machines in the past week due to Klez.x and Magistr.x viruses on 98 and 95 boxes. All three users had virus protection but had let the subscription lapse. Nice profit for me, too bad for them.
We block about 4-5 viruses a week at the firewall and a few more at the smtp gateway, and usually none inbound at the outlook level. WIthout AV protection we'd be sitting ducks...
This story is false.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
It has crippled my workplace because it was not a "high-profile" virus and Norton did not ship defs for it early enough.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I've been having unprotected sexual relations since I was 13 or so. I have never received a virus, not from traditional style sex, not from [censored :-)] .....nothing.
So I do, in fact, consider it to be hype. You either get a virus if (a) you are stupid, or (b)you are unlucky.
I've noticed that lots of people seem paranoid about viruses, but I've never gotten one on my computer, and all the people I know who had one got it from running programs they got in email.
Assuming a windows computer with dsl or cable without any servers running, filesharing disabled or password protected, and no Outlook, would it be possible to get a virus?
If the media didn't hype the virus issue to people who normally wouldn't know any different, then the problem would probably have been much much greater.
Think of Y2K: a big deal, yes, and plenty of people were saying right up through January 1999 that something had to be done, and soon, because thousands if not millions of computers and software programs were affected. Eventually, they all got on it. The problem was licked, and virtually no major Y2K issues were still existing by the time the date actually arrived.
Sure, some people overreacted by building underground computer-free bunkers and stocking up on gasoline and bottled water -- but then, there are always people who overreact. Y2K probably wouldn't have caused the end of the world, but it would have been a pretty big nuisance if the media didn't get the word out so that normal people knew to upgrade their products and pressure companies to produce the upgrades for them.
You can't over-hype virus issues. You can lie and say a problem exists that doesn't, but you can't stop stressing that antivirus software and common sense when opening attachments and securing connections is important. There's always someone new to the computing world, or someone who introduces a new attack strategy, which necessitates restating all the rules.
Bottom line: everybody with a computer needs some sort of antivirus protection, even if it's just common sense. Everybody with an Windows PC on the Internet ought to have antivirus software as well, and keep it up-to-date, just because that OS is so susceptible to new attacks.
I think the last time I got a real virus (as opposed to a worm or trojan) was
a "stoned" variant on DOS when I was in high school.
Nowdays when "virus" means "Outlook scripting exploit" the best protection is
just not using it.
Who needs virus scanners?
So what happens when the virus creators release one that can communicate effectively with other peers and use that virus/bot network to update the virus with the latest exploits by sharing them with other peers? A creator could place into this system the newest exploit/means of attack and essentially get a little ahead of the AV software writers without revealing their location. The creator would have to have a way to sign code and allow the virus to only run said signed code but it could be defeated. BUT this would throw a kink into current AV thinking. Viruses like Nimbda could mutate to use the latest and greatest quicker, start targeting hosts differently, change signatures, etc.
Obviously the same method used to mutate/update the virus could be used to defeat it but it makes it much more dificult to track down the culprit and eradicate all the infected hosts. Hell they could even tap into some of the more complicated means of mutation using techniques alread pioneered by Genetic Alg and Complex Adaptive systems.
The mainstream viruses (!virii) are using pretty simple techniques to spread. But thats not always gonna be the case. And as it gets more complex we'll need software to identify these threats. Using good, updated AV software isn't really crying wolf, it's just being safe. But the hype is just gonna cause disinterest among users.
Everyone's always banging on about viruses (virii)... Why?
:-)
My Beowulf cluster hasn't been infected!
The first time an email worm hit my company was HELL. I had to shut down the email server and delete a few mailboxes. Every available pair of hands was walking around with an AV CDROM, scanning and cleaning all day long. The network was basically dead, flooded to destruction. Nobody got anything done for hours and hours. For days after that, people were afraid to check their email - nobody wanted to be the one who "started it" the next time.
That cost us in time, money, and training. After that, we got serious. Amavis + Sophos on the email server, virus scan installed locally on some of the PCs, and just recently I added a procmail recipe to drop anything that windows might execute.
Again, the company "loses" money by having to pay for all of this (my time, Sophos licensing, new beefed up email server) but that's better than standing idly by, paying people to sit there paralyzed in fear in the face of Outlook.
The threat to business from virii is very real, but once your defenses are in place you can usually kick back and relax. That is, after you've deleted all the P2P apps, chat programs, instant messangers, and other CRAP that they really shouldn't have brought to work.
We know that in the current environment, viruses aren't really all that damaging. Every time a new virus comes along, experts warn everyone that it is the most potentially destructive one ever, and blah blah blah. Then the virus never seems to catch on, the effects are minor, and all is quiet until the next major 'scare'.
The question is, are the experts overhyping the potential dangers, or are the dangers reduced as a result of their making the public aware of the virus and its potential for harm?
-- Adam
Doesn't anyone remember when viruses would actually do something?
Used to be when you got a virus it would munge your bootsector, and as much of the disk as it could after it mailed itself you all your friends.
The viruses these days just seem to be made to propogate as far as possible, or to do something juvenile like deface web sites.
The only reason they are only hype these days is because the payload is (relatively) innoxious. One line of code could make the few hundred thousand of computers infected last year dead, rather than popping up a cute little message.
I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but just viewing my IDS logs for today, Nimda and Code Red are the two biggest problems hitting my network. We get about 800 attempts a day on our firewall from machines that are still infected by those two. I tried helping out the sites infected by attempting to let their admins know their servers were infected but I soon found that roughly 1/3 of my day was spent trying to contact an admin, most of which didn't know how to fix it or didn't care. Now I don't bother unless it's something like what happened two weeks ago where I was hit every three minutes with Code Red attempts for over 48 hours from the same host thereby causing my log files to grow to 180 MB and pissing me off in the process. Contacting their ISP (which is my ISP as well) was a joke. I just got an e-mail from their support this morning asking me to send the log files in an e-mail instead of an attachment because they apparently have problems opening a .txt file. It went away after about a week. Checking the dshield.org website showed that the IP in question was apparently affecting a lot of other sites as well. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, Nimda and Code Red are still a huge problem.
to everyone that got infected with one :)
I madeyou waste a mod pint by making this post go lower.
I would have to disagree with the statement that viruses prey primarily on stupidity. I have many intelligent people working in my company who know nothing about computers. Accountants, Credit Managers, Sales Managers, Location Managers, etc. These people are intelligent and competent in their respective fields. However, many are no doubt "ignorant" regarding anything computer-related.
Instead of revoking access to users we like to label as "stupid", maybe we as IT Managers, Sys Admins, etc. should spend more time training our people rather than browsing Slashdot all day. : )
Just a thought.
I run redundant protection on the network I administer. All mail is processed internally, scanned (virus definitions updated hourly), executables stripped. I have gotten dozens of alerts (not false alarms) this week alone, but all were stopped at the mail server.
If for some reason they get past this (such as one user who decided to check their webmail account), the desktop scanners (which are password protected, and centrally updated hourly) catch it.
All this activity is more than 'just scares'... I've dealt with virus infections twice, losing a full day of work for the entire company between them, due to people feeling that the memos / warnings I send don't apply to them.
If it wasn't for the fact that people who understand the threats are responsible for protecting users from them, the effects would be even more wide spread.
Are they going to bring the internet down? Maybe. If the average user would realise that having an up to date firewall / installing security patches/ keeping virus definitions current were like locking your door, and that not opening unknown attachments / running unknown programs was like not unlocking the door for a stranger, it would be a lot less likely.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
Exactly,
:-
:-
DUMB COMPUTER USERS
Fact is, 99% of the world fit that category.
There was an article about designing UI's few days back and all I could think about was my financial partner who has to be told how to minimize a window every time.
The kinda guy that uses a remote email connection to send 10meg word documents to the person in the office next to him, even though all he needs to do is to send locally in 1/100th of the time.
The marketing-type person who leans over your shoulder when your computing and says to a client
"You know, these machines are amazing !"
Yeah - you should see the user jump through hoops of fire !
And we worry about virus problems being over-hyped ?
Screw the viruses,
I can see the headlines now
"Dumb computer users seen as the biggest risk to computer security."
"Symantec announces the anti-dumb-computer-user fix"
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Besides, in my experience, those who are not the computer-savvy fittest still have lots of pr0n to share. Gotta keep 'em operational.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I hold my breath when a new Nimda-class worm starts to spread. It kills Internet performance on my cable modem (operated through Road Runner, yet another AOL Time Warner collective) as many Windows users don't have proper protection set and propagate the virus nastily. I can't be infected; I use Mac OS 9 or X. But it drags network access to the ground and kicks it around for hours.
Fortunately, RR appears to deactivate accounts that are virus-ridden if no action is taken, which reduces the problem. Still, my Mac OS firewall dutifully records Code Red and Nimda attacks as well as the usual crackers trying to crack the very-difficult-to-crack Mac OS.
Thanks, Microsoft, for introducing software that helps inconvenience EVERYONE on the Internet.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Makes you wonder about that super secret underground floor all the big anti-virus companies have in which viruses are written in order to perpetuate the continued existence, need, and financial well-being of said company.
I have to pay for the bandwidth used by my web site. So when thousands of unpatched and infected Windows boxes start hammering my site with virus-du-jour requests, it costs me money directly. Maybe not billions of dollars, but every penny counts when you are barely holding your dot-com finances together.
Anyone who has felt the anguish of lost mail, lost code, damaged servers, running around trying to cauterize machine infections and keep those Outlook users from clicking anything knows how bad a virus problem can be.
I apologize to the media that the internet hasn't imploded spectacularly enough to make a highly-rated special report on CNN, but that does not mean the problem of virus outbreaks isn't real.
And yet my server logs indicate daily that code red is still out there.
I have been sitting out of security for a while so I have missed most of the anti.security.is movement. So, now that I'm caught up on things, I want to point out the hypocrisy I see in anti.security.is's approach to keeping exploits private vs full disclosure. This is not a personal attack. I have a lot of love and respect for the some of people from ADM and anti.security.is. With that said, however, I gave a significantly different view on all this.
The stuff in []'s is taken out of the anti.security.is FAQ:
[Q: Exactly whats wrong with open security again?]
[A: 1. Would you give handguns to toddlers? Then why give 0day to angry teens?]
What is the purpose of writing 0day in the first place? I see four reasons:
1. Personal satisfication (or enjoyment of the power) with writing an exploit
2. Impress all their friends (which also means they will distribute it to their close friends)
3. Power (I have code that code own all the world's major governments)
4. Blackhat activities
The only harmless one here is #1, though I think almost no one does things for #1. #2 usually leads to #4, which is how things get leaked. If exploits get leaked, I think that is INFINITELY worse than full disclosure. The system administrators never get the exploits, only those with hacker connections. Now you have a set of hackers with working exploits and no one else knows. To my understanding, this is exactly why anti.security.is opposed full disclosure.
With full disclosure, it may be true that hackers get the exploits, but at the least the administrators usually hear about the vulnerability and have a chance to fix it.
[Despite trite sayings, exploiting a particular problem is harder than fixing it, as the patch or difference is usually only a matter of a line or two of code.]
Again, why would that be of concern? To my understanding, you are saying exploits should be kept secret because if they are leaked the developer(s) will fix it quickly, and then all your time developing the exploit will be wasted. Why do you need an exploit for an unpatched vulnerability if not to use it? This leads me to my true question.. the real reason behind my posting: how can you consider this a legitimate movement if you support anti-disclosure and hack at the same time? It's hypocrisy. You don't want exploits released because you don't want script kiddies getting it and using it--maybe you don't like the way script kiddies go around defacing sites and making the security community look bad. But I don't understand how hacking a system to get source code, for example, is any better. If you're going to be against
disclosure of exploits, you should be against all development of exploits.
[Just like any other artistic creators, coders have the natural right to keep findings secret and personal. Often many hard hours, days, and even weeks go into the development of a viable and correctly functioning exploit. This task is not always trivial or swift.]
Okay, but what about the "natural rights" of the people being exploited by your private exploits? If someone writes an exploit and keeps it private, I think in most cases it's because he/she plans to use it.
[The blacklist is a list of groups and individuals in the security community who have engaged in policies that have served to harm mutual developers, network administrators, and security researchers through reckless postings or leaks.]
I think writing exploits at all should put people on the blacklist. So the very author of this FAQ, who clearly does not oppose the development of exploits for private use, should be on this blacklist.
[The subtle point here is that many whitehats inadvertently serve as blackhats when they
release weapons of electronic destruction.]
Umm, and when did ADM stop being blackhat?
Well, given amount of Klez.H-infected mail our mail server has filtered through this week - I highly doubt virii are marketing hype. Without AVP installed on our mail server, our network soon would be one giant and almost incurable mess, without massive client-side antivirus installfest. Klez.H's quite sophisticated distribution scheme (it infects every RW share on MS network (yes, we're running one)) plays really against our admins. One infected machine - and soon you're finding half of the network poised. Thanks God I'm running Linux :-)
I really wish people would get the terminology correct. Spafford posted a good definition over twelve years ago. A quick and dirty definition: Viruses (virii?) generally require human interaction (open an email, click on a link, etc) while worms propagate on their own, exploiting vulnerabilites within an application or operating system.
With that said, it only makes sense that CodeRed (a worm) wouldn't make the top ten list of viruses. I doubt any true worm could ever make some top ten list when compared with large virus infections. Viruses infect workstations (PCs) while worms (generally) infect servers. Last time I checked, there were a whole lot more PCs than servers, thus a much bigger chance of infection. Furthermore, CodeRed's (a worm) impact was limited by that wonderful thing called Open Disclosure. No, M$ will never admit to this, but as a security professional who does network security monitoring, I know my clients would have been severly impacted if signatures hadn't been available for our sensors (insert shameless plug) a month prior to CodeRed (a worm!!) being released. Virus signatures, on the other hand, tend to be created after a virus has been let loose in the wild and has already impacted users.
Bammkkkk
www.sguil.net
The Analyst Console for NSM
How can anyone look at numbers like that and say it's not a problem? I find the numbers absolutely shocking...
Basically if I buy something from a website, I want to make sure it does not run on IIS. In that sense Code Red crippled many sites for me because I am not able to use them anymore.
Yeah -- CNN's right -- there's alot of hype about viruses/worms, but I think that they really miss the bigger picture, which is security in general.
Worms like CodeRed show that a well planned, coded, executed worm attack could bring the whole internet to its knees (or at least jam up big parts of the major backbones -- as well as any network with enough machines running OS/Software X). Imagine what would happen if cretin X wrote a worm to exploit a common Cisco vulnerability.
Now, what the article really misses, is that virus companies can do little to fix these. Of course they're capitalizing on stuff like security worms...but these worms really expolit holes in the OS/Software -- and the reasons that the exist are twofold...
1. Software and OS vendors aren't responding to security issues fast enough.
2. (L)users and admins aren't keeping all of their machines properly updated with the fixes.
The virus app vendors really don't do anything to address these issues. Only the vendors and (l)users can fix these...and when everyone finally gets around to doing it right, a major internet security problem gets a whole lot better.
-Turkey
-Turkey
Symobtec announces the anti-dumb-computer-user fix
:-
April 1 2003
Symantec today announced the release of thier new flagship product aimed at protecting people against themselves.
Symobtec CEO, Dr. I love You, gives us a new angle on the breakthough
"Lets face it, users are dumb, stupid, fuck-wits and always will be, so our product is aimed at eliminating dumb, stupid, fuck-wits from the workplace"
When pressed for further comments, Dr. V.bs excused himself, indicating that he was coming down with a flu or something, possibly caused by his built in PC coffee-cup holder.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Call me M$ paranoid, but this sounds like the type of thing that someone in Redmond would say, "It's no big deal..."
Having said that, let's forget about the MSTDs that prey on simple minded users, and really, you've gotta agree with the article.
At least not in the average small business, and in most homes. Most businesses large enough to have both dedicated system admins and some sort of software management have been able to deal with these problems without impact, but small businesses and homes are getting killed.
Here's just a small example. I work for a smallish insurance company (about 200 users). We run Windows NT as our mainstream desktop, and NT on most of our servers. So we're theoretically ripe for virus/worm problems. However, we have an admin staff (which I run), and we pay NAI a tidy sum for their antivirus suite. We run scanning on all servers, all desktops, and we manage it with EPO (a very slick program for managing their AV, and Norton, too). On our e-mail system we run both their Groupshield for Exchange, and their SMTP scanners, with a ton 'o' filters we've set up to block all sorts of executables. We keep up-to-date on our public servers as far as patches, follow all security guidelines, restrict at the firewall, and we use MS's URLscan to block further.
As a result, we haven't had a virus problem in years. However, over the last six months, our e-mail system has blocked 709 known viruses, and blocked even more that met our filtering criteria.
That's 709 separate potential incidents, with all the havoc and frantic patching/eradicating that would go along with it. This is on top of all the server exploits I see in our logs daily.
Where do these viruses come from? Many of them come from our agents - small mom & pop companies with 5 or so people, some PC's, nobody available with admin skills, and not enough knowledge to stay current. Because antivirus software came with the PC, they think that's the end of the story - nothing further needed.
We also get a lot from other companies in our class that aren't as stringent. That usually only happens once, then they get religion and clamp down on the users. It's be nice if they ran Linux, but nothing they use for their business would work then. And they'd probably all get rooted, anyways.
Finally, our users get infested all the time at home. Which isn't too bad a problem per se, but then they wonder why we're so strict about unauthorized software and such hardasses about it all. They just don't get it.
At work (and this is why I'm posting anonymously), we don't care if your computer isn't "fun" to use, or infinitely customizable, or if you can't have your favorite talking icons from home. We only care that they work, work correctly, and work safely, so you can do the stuff you're being paid to do. And unfortunately, the way the world is nowadays that just doesn't normally include fun anymore. Sorry. But viruses are real, they are all too often destructive, and they will cost our companies serious money if we don't spend time, money, and sweat preventing them.
Hmm, that's pretty funny cause when the worms hit, my IIS 4.0 box was immume and never affected. Since the web server responsibility was MINE, I made sure that IIS was secured... yeah that actually means "securing the box" (i.e., removing all script mappings, modules, etc that were not being actively used, securing the file ACLs, among other configuration changes). Yup, IIS was NEVER affected, therefore we were never hit. It still logs tons of hits per day from servers outside of the network as well.
It's funny that I think of the same thing when I see Apache servers that are running everything up to and including mod_YourMom... people need a lesson in security... it doesn't matter if it's IIS or Apache or NT or Linux or Joe's OS.... it makes no difference. Security holes exist in every OS and configuration... it's just the job of the astute sysadmin to make sure that the holes are plugged before the box goes into production use.
Nothing to see here, movealong
No matter how much you try and warn these people they just don't listen. They have the attention span of a gerbil and it shows. And everytime it would happen I would always get the same answer from them, "But I swear I didn't open that attatchment" To which I would reply, "The computer must have MAGICALLY sprouted hands and fingers and opened the attatchment itself, oh don't forget it also typed in your webmail username and password for you too"
(An open message to all bitter support people, angry at "end users")
(chuckles softly) Ever stop to consider that 99% of the "end users" (they are actually called people, or employees... you know the people we support who do the actual WORK that pays our salaries) out there don't really give a rip about your job frustrations any more than you care about the new IRS guidelines taxing the patience of Phil from accounting... Let's face it, most of what you tell them goes in one ear and out the other. NOT because they have the attention span of gerbils, but because YOU, and so many many like you, have a giant chip on your shoulder. You don't respect the people you work with, you don't appreciate the fact that you have a specialized skill that others don't share. So you talk down to your users, then you talk over their heads, then you talk about things that don't concern them or how they do their job. The signal to noise ratio is such that OF COURSE they won't really listen when you warn about viruses...
Lighten up a little, learn to see the bigger picture, learn to see your co-workers (once you get a job again) with compassion and not this holier than thou crap and I bet you might start to notice a change.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
The obvious solution is for the Bush Administration to appoint a Computerland Security Advisor and then enact a "Computer Virus Warning System" that uses a different color code to indicate the severity of the computer virus/trojan/worm.
I recommend the following levels:
GREEN: Open any file or email attachment with inpunity
YELLOW: Don't open any attachment that contains a virus
ORANGE: Don't open any email client
RED: Turn off your computer
They can send an email each morning (or whenever the status changes) to all computer users so we know how to gauge the virus threat and take appropriate measures.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I'm building a web server where I work, and I've been having trouble with some of the code... I keep "tail -f error.log" active, and I see lots of code red hits on this server daily, mostly from overseas machines... and it's not even a publicly known server, it's just a dev box.
Being a Mac user at home, I haven't had to care about Code Red, but I find it's presence in the world, and it's attempts to access unknown, non-Win machines (especially ones that I'm working on) very disturbing. As I understand it, the hits I get are nothing compared to some servers, so I can only imagine the amount of bandwidth wasted on Code Red and it's kin.
Had more people actually heeded the legitimate virus warnings of the past, this problem might not exist. Hyping the pointless crap got us to this point, and I don't see what's going to fix it in the short term.
-----
Is Darwin an evolutionary OS?
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Computer viruses (including worms, trojans and so on) continue to be a real threat to many users (and yes, I will say especially Windows users). From my point-of-view this article did much more damage than good. It would be like writing a story saying that unprotected sex with strangers is okay because the odds of getting something aren't really all that great.
The fact is that the reason that the threat level from viruses is down is because more people are more aware and are taking preventitive measures. This reduces the spread of viruses in the wild but it does not stop them. I would argue that the fact that the spread of serious attacks being down demonstrates that what is being done is at least partly effective.
I'd also argue that even more still needs to be done. I'd suggest that when a company learns of an exploit involving their software, it is their responsibility to address it sooner rather than later - that by not doing so, they are part of the problem. I'd suggest that companies that allow the use of their resources by whatever means (ie:open relay, unfiltered email, access to systems and etc) also have responsibility. But most of all, I would argue that the vandals that write and knowingly distribute the software should be treated as felons and given appropriate sentences.
Even the aforementioned actions would not eliminate the need for protection in the form of secure systems, antivirus software, and due dilligence on the part of the user. But when all of these things are combined, we can keep the situation tolerable.
After all, the news media focuses on the rapidly spreading viruses, and that is the only kind the anti-virus programs can stop. That stuff is the equivalent of kids spray painting a wall. The whole point of it is to spread itself and make the top 10 list, not do any serious damage. But this same technology could be used to, say, drop a trojan into a competitor, have it ferret out any files marked with "Marketing Plan" or "Project X" or "Financial Results", pop them back out to a waiting black hole, then quietly erase itself after 6-8 weeks. How would a sysadmin even know it happened? By the .00001% increase in net traffic?
I found W32.Badtrans.B@mm on a test box today~
c omQ 12@yahoo.com
A timer is used to examine the currently open window once per second and to check for a window title that contains any of the following as the first three characters:
LOG
PAS
REM
CON
TER
NET
These texts form the start of the words LOGon, PASsword, REMote, CONnection, TERminal, NETwork. If any of these words are found, then the key logging is enabled for 60 seconds. Every 30 seconds, the log file and the cached passwords are sent to one of these addresses or some others which are currently not operational:
ZVDOHYIK@yahoo.com
udtzqccc@yahoo.
DTCELACB@yahoo.com
I1MCH2TH@yahoo.com
WPADJ
smr@eurosport.com
bgnd2@canada.com
and everybody is surprise to see that the article is drivel. Consider the source?
Of course you need some virus protection, but the media will do anything to whip people into a frenzy to increase their ratings. Just remember to be careful and use protection, and you shouldn't get any viruses.
You'm all ought to know, us black folk ain'ta niggers, you need to see that as the representitive of the afro-american community, and a well established fund raising afro-american cause. Actually that is well hung dick to you'm white folk. I am the man.....yes er ree brother talkin.....
You needs to see the winds of change. cuz i am the legend whom makes martin luther king and Malcom x taddpoles in the stream of urine. Hallylooya -amen brother....
Libert-y was not founded on the back of oppression. it was founded on the back of many southern white bitches as we screwed there lilly white ass to death. This Snake in my trouser-s is bigger if not more poundage than your average white needle dick. Amen to that white boy...
You ought not ask what we can do for you, but ask what you can do for my black ass. You neanderthall week minded muslim loving herd nerding european fag loving folks? If you whit liberal sexist butt fucking white boys could learn to get of the trailer park and into some white ass then you can see that....... Amen brother we have prevailed.... yeah we got it all.... you gave it to us you moronic white asses of a cum twat beer drinking fag loving white peach dick ass.
Youm need to see that I the good reverend can not be held accountable for the trash talking bible to my use wielding instrument. That that book is mine and i change it daily to suit my needs. So take your charlie daniels ass back to hickville you bunch of crud sucking no color looking no beauty ever fools. Amen I say it so well.....
You all are probably mild mannered funn loving donkey chasing bull dick licken Steelers fans too. Oh you should never say so much as me hanging from a tree as your women can see my dick hanging in her ass. Remember me when you eat the snatch tonight and remember that i was there........
Good day you white no dick pecker lickers.....
This has been the revrend and I have spoken............
yew stick, Jews for Peace
I've been inundated by Sircam and now Klez, two worms that propagate through e-mail adresses found in local files. On top of that, Klez is sending copies of itself with my address in the "From:" field, leading to all sorts of false accusations of infection (as if: OS X here).
My Hotmail account has to be emptied twice daily or else the accretion of Klez debris puts it over quota. I'm starting to think that it's a Microsoft plot to get people to buy their premium Hotmail package.
-=A=-
The viruses that have been widely propagated so far have all been fairly benign - they haven't done that much other than propagate. After all, a virus doesn't spread terribly well if it destroys its host.
Imagine what the impact would be, however, of a virus that spreads as effectively as Code Red, but formats the hard-drive after 48 hours? (Or perhaps after it's infected a certain number of machines?)
There were plenty of IIS machines that were infected for a good deal longer than 48 hours before their owners became aware of it. Hell - my boxes at home still receive hundreds of Code Red probes.
The flow of IIS vulnerabilities doesn't seem to be drying up - it may well only be a matter of time before someone writes something that's really malicious. Growing complacent because the computer press has cried wolf so many times is incredibly dangerous.
Look at the description for it. Nasty. Automatically runs if you have an unpatched windows machine and you preview or view your email. I have been sent several copies of it in the last two days. I am glad I patched my internet explorer, otherwise there would be something nasty on my system.
Everytime I act as semiwilling tech support to my Windoze friends it is because of viruses.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
The reasons that these more damagin virus's didn't take down the net or bring companies to a crawl is the same reason most virus's don't kill you. The more damaging the threat the more quickly and precisly the system's defenses react. For your body that means white blood cells and the other parts of the defense system react more vigorously, for computer viruses it means remediation efforts are put on highest priority and people work to clean them. Just because the defenses worked doesn't mean they aren't needed.
p.s. karma's at 50 don't bother moding up
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Tell it to my server logs. Half the hits are either from systems with a virus that tries the exploits that code red/nimda did, or from a really foolish script-kiddie who wants in and that thinks I'm running Windows and can't be bothered to find out otherwise.
-Sara
the users also feel that it is your job, as IT guru, to fix these issues for them. You rely on them to ensure your paycheck shows up on time with the appropriate amount of taxes and whatever taken out of it. That's their job. Our job is to ensure that they can't hurt themselves electronically. So we set up AV software on mail servers as well as automate AV software (incl. engine upgrades and definition updates) on file servers and their desktops. It would be a beautiful world if they could keep from clicking that pretty shiny .exe file, but they won't.
That's why the role of the SysAdmin is 50% tech, 50% babysitting...
-heathrow - played in corporate sandboxes
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye need to know on Earth, besides TCP/IP.
I'm running apache on my webserver that gets almost no legitimate hits a day. I don't advertise it etc.
My error.log file is 50 (Fifty) megs. Since January. 2002.
Lots of entries look like this, with some variations. I also appreciate skript kiddies trying to run root.exe on my box.
[Wed Apr 24 10:44:21 2002] [error] [client 4.35.125.66] File does not exist: *:/****/msadc/..%5c/..%5c/..%5c/..Á/..Á/..Á/win nt/system32/cmd.exe
I'd say that the main problem is not that the virus actually does anything harmful, but that their box is broadcasting to random ip's "hack me" and that person's hdd is shared with full perms and that if a script kiddie wanted to delete all files on the lamer's machine, they probably could, theft of corporate info (i.e. if someone works at home) is also really easy.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
...where are the Palm bashers?
"for Palm there has only been one actual, official virus, period. There's been none for Windows CE yet."
Anyone who thinks that viruses are just hype and don't cause an inordinate amount of suffering and expense for the vast majority of those whose home computers and small office machines get infected needs to socialize beyond their own demographic a bit more.
.doc files being corrupted and no longer loading right. A Word macro virus ate about four months of work for him. The next was about some porn dialog popping up every time he booted his computer. The next was.. I forget, there's been a dozen over the past six or seven years, but in each case I would either have to spend a lot of time on the phone or he'd wind up taking his computer in to a shop and be charged $75 to format his drive.
My father in law is a retired writer. He's not technically sophisticated, he doesn't back up as often as he should, and he doesn't wrinkle his nose and think "What the hell is this?" every time he gets an attachment. The first panicked call we got was a result of all of his
A good friend of mine called me two days ago in a panic about the W32klez virus. Their small office (a non-profit with about 16 computers, Microsoft networking) was thoroughly infected, and some people's home machines - those who check their email from home - were also infected. These are gardeners, not software developers. The fact that executable attachments can be viruses is NOT the first thing in their mind when opening an email. Days of suffering for them, plus weeks of repairing damage to their credibility as a result of all the Klezmer Deep Throating Teens (or whatever the hell subjects it picked) emails sent from their machines.
So, how do so many intelligent people form the opinion that viruses are nothing but hype? That's an easy one: My wife and I are virtually immune to viruses because our file sharing system consists of a Linux box running sendmail and proftp. Our email clients on our satellite win98 boxes are older copies of Eudora, and we're highly suspicious about any attachments. So, it's easy for us to get into the mindset that viruses are a load of hooey and couldn't really do that much damage. They can't... to us. From reading people's posts here, that view seems to work for most Slashdot readers, but it ain't How Things Are for many many others.
Lighten up a little, learn to see the bigger picture, learn to see your co-workers (once you get a job again) with compassion and not this holier than thou crap and I bet you might start to notice a change.
You have no fucking clue...
Most admin's start out with the best of intentions, focus on being nice, focus on teaching your users so they don't rely on you so much. Then when things are gravy you can focus on fun stuff like bringing up new servers or network services.
Reality is just as I stated in my original comment. After 7 years of dealing with really stupid people, I don't have the urge to give them a coke and a smile. I ain't a fucking burger flipper you got that? The last people in the company that should be that stupid are the one's in charge.
By your logic, you're focusing the burden of responsibility to the admin and not the end user. So I guess it's MY fault they opened the attatchment. I guess it's MY fault that I have to order a new laptop everytime this paticular sales lady goes out on travel and returns with a mangled laptop because "It's too much trouble to carry it on" This paticular lady i'm thinking of DESTROYED 9 laptops in 3 months! You would think MAYBE after the first one she would wise up BUT SHE KILLED 8 MORE!
Lighten up my ass, i'm sick of being a sysadmin. Honestly, I don't think i'm ever going back to anything IT realated anymore because it is not me that is the one with the holier than thou attitude, it's them.
You hit the nail on the head! They have enough problems with their own job frustrations.
Every time I hear that AOL commercial and that guy says "no more of that computer mumbo-jumbo" is causes me to shudder - I think "It's not mumbo-jumob, it's easy!" and then I realize to them it is mumbo-jumbo.
So treat is as such. Don't explain to them what viruses do or how they spread, if hotmail is causing problems, I block hotmail. But then again, I can do that. My boss is so comp-illiterate I don't even give him a PC, PDA, terminal - nothing! But when someone complains that they need hotmail, I ask "what business purpose does it serve?" I explain how much a virus outbreak costs the company, and the boss backs me up. End of problem.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
I can't believe how clueless people are that think viruses aren't dangerous. True the recent big ones have been annoyware, but it would have been childs play for their author to put in a malicious payload that could have erased everything on everyone's drives. It only takes one bad virus to cause trillions of dollars in damage, real damage. We should be taking these non-destructive ones as warning shots, not passing them off as just pranks.
Travis
Personally, I'm glad an asshole like you is out of his sysadmin job.
Nothing worse than a arrogant know-it-all prick for an admin...I'd rather have someone with no ability but a good attitude.
That's like viruses. We spend millions and billions to prevent all of the viruses except the ones that fuck us up. God laughs at us.
In 2003, the news media reported on the Faux Flu. It was dangerous they said. It would kill old people and children. It would cause everyone else to spends weeks in the hospital. It had all sorts of nasty symptoms, which I won't describe here.
The reporting was hyped all out of proportion. Every hour on the hour there was a public service announcement regarding it. Major troop movements in the Middle East were relegated to the back page in favor of reporting on some kid with a runny nose on page one.
The public went into a panic. People went and got their flu shots. The covered their mouths and noses when the coughed or sneezed. They didn't go into work when they had the sniffles. They stopped french kissing with strangers.
But there was no outbreak. A total of five people died of the Faux Flu. The people blamed the media for inciting panic. Newspaper subscriptions plummeted and Disney Megacorp had to sell off AOL/TW to stay afloat.
Then the Fu Flu hit the next year. No one believed the media. No one took their flu shots. Sneezing in crowded train stations was considered hip and cool, a way of telling the doommongers to bugger off.
And 1.3 billion people died.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Well the article has been /.'d or something, so I can't read it, but is anyone else getting tons of Klez worms on the mail, either directly or as bounces? That's the one that exploits IE's problem with the word 'begin', *AND* forges return addresses from e-mail addresses found on infected computers.
It's very disturbing to get bounces from hotmail because you supposedly sent someone a virus. (No, I don't have it; all my e-mail reading and sending is done from a Linux box and its a Windows/Outlook worm.)
---dragoness
Whew! That's a relief that I'll never have to work with you.
Get a clue...it's not your *fault* that any of that happened, but it is your *job* to fix it. That's why they pay you, remember? The job description didn't say "surf slashdot all day, and be rude to anyone who dares disturb you".
I would have to disagree with most people here in their view of the majority of PC users as dumb. Thats not the case.
Most people are un-aware whats involved when it comes to virii and av software. For the average home user, they'd like to be able to turn on their machine, check email, browse, etc.
When something like a virus comes along, in their email, or what not, they havent had much exposure to that before. Most people will inadvertently open an attachment, or even click on it, which in some cases will start the virus automatically.
Once they get infected, and their normal operations get upset, someone has to fix it. After all the times I have fixed machines for people, almost everyone then understands the implications of getting a virus. They are more knowledgable about the problems that they can cause, and will work hard to keep updated with their av definitions, etc.
It's not that most users are idiots, just the majority of them havent experienced these problems before, and dont have the level of understanding that most of us do.
Once something happens, its less likely to happen again.
--Trying to Defend the Average User
One line of code? With Microsoft Visual Basic .NET you can do it with only half a line! With SOAP compatability.
The media is not step in step with reality...no big news here. The media has never been step in step with reality. The media is going to write about things that fit well within their perception of the world, and will write what sells copies.
The Media reported heavily on the "Big Red" virus because the name had hip appeal...invoking an image of a late night hacker working on excessive doses of Mountain Dew.
Of course, people responding to the hyped viruses probably helped stop less popular but more sinester code. I have no expectation of the media being something different than it is. A hype story every once inwhile can help raise awareness.
A more interesting take on the picture is how certain names lodge themselves onto the media's tongues and get nationwide coverage, while others languish in the backroom. In this regard, you could say the Big Red virus infected the media itself, getting a great deal of mainstream media coverage.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
It's just as easy to not open an e-mail attachment as it is to not stick your dick in the shredder. I shudder to think of what would happen if people had a shredder support staff telling them not to stick their dick in there all the time.
Just yesterday I was on the phone with someone who I knew had recieved a virus from the mail logs, and told her "Do NOT open that message with subject..." and she said "What, this one?" and clicked on it, infecting her and her entire office. People are stupid about computers because someone told them it should be hard, and intellegent people will do the stupidist things under those circumstances.
You're the digital information equivalent of a burger flipper, boy.
It's important to the revenue stream of the anti-virus companies that their products not work very well. Note how these things work. They mostly recognize known viruses. They don't generally stop improper behavior by all possibly-hostile content. Hence, constant upgrades are necessary. The initial version is usually free, just like a drug dealer.
It doesn't have to be this way. Suppose, for example, that Mozilla rendered all pages and executed all downloaded content in a "jail" secured by the OS, one that could write to the window, receive input when it has the focus, and talk back to the sending server, but nothing else. This could work under FreeBSD as currently shipping; Linux may get there.
Education is good, but how about educating companies like Microsoft so that we're less vulnerable to such viruses? Why should the users suffer so much when the majority of the blame (IMO) is on companies like Microsoft?
The "OBVIOUS" tag, I mean.
--Blair
They're disguised as the marketese word, "messaging"... that, and telemarketers.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
> they are actually called people, or employees... you know the people we support who do the actual WORK that pays our salaries
Easy to say when you have a good job. I consider them PEOPLE when they HELP ME HELP THEM to solve their problem. When they are lazy ("oh, just send someone up. I don't have time to sit on the phone all day."), unecessarily vague ("Is the Internet down?"), or rude, they are not people. They are lower life forms and deserve to be treated as such.
Oh, you don't give two shits about making my job easier? Good. Don't be surprised when I don't run out my office door to give you a hand when you opened ANOTHER OBVIOUS ATTACHMENT AGAIN that fucked your computer and the rest of the company.
AND FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T SAVE YOUR ONLY COPY ON A FLOPPY DISK. HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU? We have a sophisticated network and e-mail system for a reason, dumb ass. Oh, it went in one ear and out the other you say? Sucks for you asshole, because you just lost a lot of work by not listening.
Perhaps I would be so bitter if I didn't spend 4+ fucking years to get a degree only to end up answering the same remedial questions for careless, rude people. My job is about as challenging and fulfilling as monitoring dirt movement. Sadly, there are no other jobs for me and I'm about to get laid off even though I was there longer than my fucking boss who doesn't have a degree. WTF?!
> learn to see the bigger picture
I already do. I regularly promote dangerous behaviors like drunk driving. For every fatal car accident it's one less person I have to compete against in the job market. Booooyah!
Scares? I don't think so. None of these worms has been actually written well, taking into consideration survivability, self presurvation(sic?), or to take advantage of the human nature of things. They where, at best, bad examples.
In a way, I'm glad they where, indeed, POOR examples. They could have done much more damage, by actually taking over the affected systems. Build themselves a happy little distributed distributed network. Talk to eachother. Be silent for a while, allowing itself to propograte, comminucate, and eventually, launch a very deadly payload, all at once.
Last years worms where at best case, ticks or leeches. Easily removed, annoying as hell, but in most cases, for the most case, harmless..
Just wait. Fighting disease could be considered a 'scare'. But I have yet to see an AIDS of the computer world..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The correct URL for the HoneyNet Project is:
http://project.honeynet.org/
Windows may be a different story, but I have been using Macs since the days of the SE-30 and have never once encountered a virus of any sort and I've been far from careful. The vast majority of that time I have not had so-called virus protection software installed because... I certainly have run into problems with virus protection software.
--- What?
Woah, chill out dude!
They don't call "support and repairs" an idiot tax for nothing you know.
Car mechanics have known this forever. Time for computer staff to clue in and realise people will not do what they're told but that's OK because they will pay you BIG $$$ over and over for you to fix it. If they don't pay you the BIG $$$ then you don't fix it and when they _really_ need that report in on time, then they pay you the BIG $$$.
I wrote a paper last year on Code Red and the whole hacking culture, which won its category in my employer's "papers program". Unfortunately the paper isnt available publicly yet, though Im hoping to have it published soon.
/.ers have pointed out.
Anyway, the conclusion was basically this:
There have been several worms in recent times, CodeRed, CodeRed v2, CodeRed II, and Nimda to name the more obvious ones. All of these exploited bugs in IIS that Microsoft knew about in June 1999 but other than a few knowledge base articles with attached patches, they did nothing about it. The same bug was even reported in beta versions of XP, so they didnt even fix their own development code.
We were lucky in that these worms were mostly an annoyance which did little more than deface a web site, and/or replicate themselves. They could have done a lot more damage, as many
What they achieved though is an almost global awareness of the dangers, and potential damage that worms like these can do if they wanted to, while reminding system admins that software should be patched/upgraded regularly - particularly when the bug being exploited had been known about and reported by cert 2 years prior to the worms being created! In this regard, they did us a great service. The media hype and predictions of doom got peoples attention in a way that had not been achieved before.
Microsoft, with its marketing machine, got loads of publicity. I remember seeing Bill Gates on the news, standing at a podium with the FBI at his side saying how Microsoft had reacted quickly and provided patches to defeat the evil hackers (remember that these patches had been available for 2 years - what Microsoft was providing was simply a cumulative bundle of these). The publicity was priceless, touting Microsoft as our saviour, yet I believe it was Microsofts lack of action in fixing the problem and making people aware of it that allowed the worms to be created in the first place.
Its not good enough to simply know about a problem and passively make a patch available for download. Its difficult to keep track of all customers, but I would have thought that if you have a large number of very large corporate customers, you should pro-actively send them updates and advisories, and make it widely known that there is a problem which needs attention. Whatever Microsoft did or didnt do, it wasnt enough (obviously).
I said it so much better in the paper, but basically I believe that the guys that wrote these worms did us a service, and although CNN might think it was a big fuss over nothing, I would disagree. It was certainly the bigest event of its kind in the internets history so far.
"If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4... " -- Wil Wheaton
I guess it's MY fault that I have to order a new laptop everytime this paticular sales lady goes out on travel and returns with a mangled laptop because "It's too much trouble to carry it on" This paticular lady i'm thinking of DESTROYED 9 laptops in 3 months! You would think MAYBE after the first one she would wise up BUT SHE KILLED 8 MORE!
Most places I've worked, the subsequent 8 laptops would have come out of HER paycheck--a great incentive to be more careful with company property. (The insane paperwork to get *anything* ordered at my current workplace is a good incentive not to wreck your current box, too).
Frankly, as long as it's not coming out of YOUR paycheck, why does her idiocy with laptops spin you up so much? They were still paying you for the work involved, right?
You're laid off, and bitter--I can understand that. Been there, done that a few times. Job searching all over and getting nothing for months on end is incredibly demoralizing. However, you might want to learn to relax and enjoy things a bit more, because that bitterness will show in job interviews. Also, if the job situation is that bad locally, why not search elsewhere? The internet is damn useful for that.
---dragoness
So the complaint is that publicity sells more anti-virus software, and the latest viruses aren't doing much damage? This is a bad thing?
The claim "the virus scare is all hooey" is itself all hooey.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Sounds like one of your 6th grade classes is a little slow today. At least you'll get to go home soon and play Nintendo.
I admit to being a download slut. I have downloaded most days for the last ten years. And I am not too particular about where I download from either. But I never get viruses. Well, I got one on the mac once in 1991. And another on a word document about 1997. But that's it.
When people ask me about viruses, I always tell them to use something besides Outlook and they will be fine. And they are.
For 98% of the people out there, the damn anti-virus software is more of a hassle than the viruses they can't catch. The bloat in security software puts MS to shame. All you need is Norton anti virus to show the kids what a 386 was like. Slooooowwwww.
The only way you can get a virus nowadays, is to start up Outlook. I do not understand why the corporate IT guys, for whom these high-profile worms are a genuine headache, do not sue MS. By pretty well insisting on having scripting 24/7 in all their apps, they have created a royal road into anyone's box. The patches they offer are laughable. The house is on fire, and when a bit of flame shows in the front window, MS generously rushes up with a glass of water.
At least one major automotive company was utterly crippled by Code Red for nearly a week. The systems administration at these plants are a joke, and they're all interconnected on the network.. So everything running IIS (which is just about everything as their standard custom OS install INCLUDES it) was infected.
;)
The servers I have control over in there (which need real web interfaces and therefore ran Apache) were, naturally, immune, but the access logs sometimes showed upwards of 80 hits a second trying to infect them, all from internal addresses. I estimate that over 75% of their systems were infected. Many still are.
Oh, here's the fun part: it cripped them because the attack took out the wireless access points. The access points ran an internal web server for configuration, and it simply locked up the access point with one overlarge packet. Crunch. Eventually they disabled the access points web interfaces.
At one point, as an interim measure, they setup the main routers to block all port 80 traffic. Period. Nothing that had port 80 in it was passed anywhere. This was simply to stop all their servers from crashing at all the plants due to the massive DoS attack caused by the infected boxes trying to infect others.
So excuse me for laughing my arse off when I saw this article...
I don't think there can ever be too big of an emphasis on network security and virus protection. The internet is more fragile than most people realize and networks go down all the time from virus attacks.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
CODE red.... Big Red is gum
Well, 4 years ago (adjust for inflation), in Louisiana (adjust for lower cost of living/lower pay rates), I worked for a computer consultant who charged $75/hour to people he liked, (i.e. his discount rate) for setting up/fixing Windows computers. He was also a greedy little cheat, too. (Adjust for dishonesty). That's one data point for you. Dunno how it compares.
---dragoness
I've been (ab)using my computer(s) for over a decade (i'm 21)...running pretty much any .exe there is out there, be it downloaded from a website or whatever (except those really standing-out sex.exe and the like). I only got infected once, with a virus that freezes your pc (actually makes it incredibly slow) when you run an infected program. I think it was a side-scroller platform game, ala crystal caves...
;)
Never got the ILOVEYOU virus, never got anything. I think it is location-specific EVEN THO the internet is physical-location-independent...
oh well. Nowadays that i've been using unix (linux) i've pretty much forgotten about crashes/viruses...Also i might try out that debian trick where you NEVER need to reboot
(been a slow day today...not anyone around to talk to...so...heh...thanks for listening...)
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
I wouldn't even go as far as to say "ignorant". Getting hit with a virus can happen to anyone under the right circumstances. I goofed the other day and opened a message in Outlook Express (I turned off the preview pane) and almost got hit with a virus. Norton AntiVirus caught it so it didn't do any damage. I'm usually careful about messages from people I don't know and I certainly never click on attachments. It was just that I had a bunch of emails to go through and was careless in opening each one without thinking. I don't think that qualifies me as stupid -- we all have our momentary goofs. Spend enough time on a computer and everyone makes a mistake sooner or later.
I suppose you could argue that because I've set up LiveUpdate! to run on my desktop every damn day that I'm protecting myself but this could have easily happened to a laptop that doesn't run LiveUpdate every day. Or maybe I get hit with a virus the day it hits the web (before my LiveUpdate! runs and I get the virus definition).
GMD
watch this
The big problem with your point-of-view is that by ignoring the SA's warnings they not only make his life miserable but THEIR OWN ALSO. So Phil from accounting not only has new IRS guidelines but is now frantically trying to use his email because he couldn't be bothered to read and remember the warning message he got that morning. Being busy is no excuse, the highways are jammed but that isn't an excuse to slam into other cars constantly. You belong to the pass the buck crowd, "It is ok for me to not think and screw up because someone will clean up after me."
A crisis on your part is not necessarily one on mine.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Woman: "In other news, a lot of stuff happened that doesn't really affect you. In fact, most of it was thousands of miles away. We would tell you about it, but you'd just worry, lose some hair, and die a few days sooner."
Man: "We'll be right back after these messages from our honest sponsors..."
<accurate portrayals of real products>
Man: "...welcome back! And all this time I thought that sports car I drove made me more attractive to women."
Woman: "And I thought men who drove sports cars were better in bed!" (glances at co-anchor)
Man: "Upcoming later this hour, we sensationalize Timmy Smith's scraped knee, after a fall while he was attempting to ride a tricycle!"
Woman: "And we'll inflate claims by virus companies that hackers are out to make your life a living hell."
Man: "But first, let's go to Acton, Massachusetts for live coverage..."
Reporter: "Yes, the trolls are out in force today! It's sensationalism at it's best! Not bothering to read the stories they post on, internet users around the world are honing their reactionary skills to a fine point, putting all logic and reason behind them..."
I think it is all hype anyway. In a big office with a lot of machines running Windows, running Norton Antivirus corporate edition has been the savior many times over. This thing is controlled by a central server, and even if the braindead user opens a file inviting him to chat with naked camel penises, it will automatically catch the virus and not allow it to do further damage. Hundreds of viruses have been caught this way and we don't even bother worrying about the virus problem anymore, the server takes care of everything.
Was that supposed to be funny?
It doesn't even make sense.
I will say that many of the viruses that have been written have been nothing more than a flash in the pan. But Nimda was a different story. My college campus was a worst case scenario of this "bug" and we were offline for upwards of a week and a half. Of course, our network admins let it run unprotected for... 3 days without doing anything, so I guess they got what they deserved.
>>My CIO would be reading her hotmail or yahoo mail, whatever. Point is it was a mail service outside of my control. She would see the subject, "I love you" and thinking it was a date, she would open it, from which it would spread like mad cow diesease. The rest of my day would be spent cleaning out her crap.
Everything on Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail has been virus-scanned at the server (by Symantec and McAfee respectively) for at least 2 years. They're very aggressive about updates. Nobody gets infected via these systems. It's the idiots who are still running Outlook 97 who are causing all the problems
The entire IT industry has a serious attitude problem. Go dig ditches for a while, or pick cotton, or even flip burgers. You guys have one of the highest wage rates on the planet, yet you act like you've been assigned to shovel shit at the zoo.
Every job since the beginning of time had its downsides, and every one but the job of hermitting had to deal with lusers. But only the IT industry takes it personally. I think I could survive a week as a professional sysadmin. Could you survive a week as a professional software engineer?
p.s. Sysadmins are lusers as well. Two months ago I received two emails from IT. The first said "your Solaris machine will be upgraded remotely this Saturday. Please log out at the end of Friday, but do not power off the machine." The second said "the network will be down for maintenance this weekend. Please log off all machines by the end of Friday."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This reminds me a lot of the hype that struck around the time of the Michelangelo virus in March of 1992. Virus experts were throwing out statements about a computer appocalypse that was going to wipe out the computers of millions of computer users. By going on television and being quoted in newspaper articles, companies like McAfee and Symantec basically created an industry for themselves by using fear to sell there product. Michelangelo went off with a whimper in the end, but the antivirus industry has been going strong ever since.
bbh
If someone regularly gets into their car and does things like drive the wrong way down a one way street, he's an idiot. No matter what else he does right, he's an idiot, and will get no respect.
If someone sits down at his desk and regularly does things equivalently stupid, he can be "intelligent and competent in his respective field."
These people aren't just ignorant, they're willfully and proudly ignorant. "Don't bother me with the tedious details, computer monkey, I have real work to do."
It's a cultural problem. It's okay to be completely, harmfully incompetent about computers, so people stay that way. In fact, people are rewarded for it with sympathy.
The proper solution? Well, general ridicule would work, but not from a bunch of smart-alec computer monkeys. Have you ever seen "Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy" on SNL? That is how they see us. It's not that they are insufferably lazy when it comes to learning about computers, regardless of cost or consequence, we are irrationally demanding.
Basically, there's nothing geeks, with low social status, can do to change a harmful cultural value. Just imagine your paycheck stapled to the next idiot's forehead, try not to stress out over the problems they cause, and look for a less idiotic job. Corporate Darwinism will cure it eventually.
Just wait. Fighting disease could be considered a 'scare'. But I have yet to see an AIDS of the computer world. You've never site licensed through Microsoft?
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Hi! How are you?
I send you this post in order to have your nostalgia
See you later. Thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The lost revenue led directly to the layoff of 10% of their work force at my location.
Now I know some new questions to ask prospective employers.
Lighten up my ass, i'm sick of being a sysadmin. Honestly, I don't think i'm ever going back to anything IT realated anymore because it is not me that is the one with the holier than thou attitude, it's them.
You ever see the SNL sketches about "Your Company's Computer Support Guy"? If you haven't maybe you should. While watching it, see if you recognize anyone in the sketch...
I ain't a fucking burger flipper you got that? The last people in the company that should be that stupid are the one's in charge.
I am shocked, just SHOCKED, that you are currently out of work.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
There's an interesting paper on "Warhol Worms" here.
Basically the author predicts that, by using efficient algorithms to search the space of potential victims a worm could infect most of the vulnerable computers in 15 minutes to an hour. Pretty scary when you think of how much damage Code Red variants were doing 3 weeks after the initial hit.
Close it quick, before the morons get here...
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
"CNN is carrying a story on how the big virus scares within the last year or so have been just that: scares, usually hyped by the media..."
So CNN are now running a Dramatic Exposé (TM) on how they ran Dramatic Exposés (TM) on non-news stories...
I am a Karma Library.
Janitor: Please don't throw cigs and gumwrappers on the ground, I just have to clean them up!
....
Employee: Fuck you -- don't look at me funny or I'll get you fired.
Computer Janitor: Please don't open viruses. I just have to clean them up!
Employee: Fuck you
The key to sysadmin work is to get promoted way out of the way of any ordinary users and spend your time lurking around a datacenter. Even then it sucks though because its the same boring shit day in and day out.
Hmmm, you have a point, but I'm not receiving much money from these users. I'm getting layed off in a month and I have been searching for the last 6 months for an alternate job.
Where do you get the big money from?
That'd be more of a mental disorder then a virus.. 8-P
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I can't help it, I just love people like this! They're so full of themselves that they don't realize what kind of impression their actions make on other people :-)
We shouldn't underestimate the destructive power of viruses. Nimda took at least one Department's network down for several days in the State of Washington. I have been harping for years that my Department's network security is almost non-existent but to little avail.
Network security, if done right, is a fulltime job. Small businesses and small Government Departments just don't have the staff to keep up with it. So we're caught in a situation where we have to assess the risk of infection and the probable consequences of an infection. If the risks are great enough and the consequences bad enough we apply a patch. If not we don't and pray that we don't get hit. We just don't have the resources to apply every patch.
We do run McAfee virus scan on every computer and NetShield on all of our servers but I remember a while back when McAfee put out a new virus definition file that was bad (It didn't work with older virus scanning engines) and it brought our network down. That required a visit to about two hundred PCs to correct the problem. The anti-virus companies are working like hell to keep up. But what can they do? If they push the virus definition files out the door too fast then quality control is lowered but if they take the time for quality control then their customer's get hit with the new virus.
I just hope that when the shit really hits the fan that it is pointed to one of the most guilty parties: Microsoft. Yes Microsoft for putting out products that are making all of their customers vulnerable.
My solution is to dump the entire Microsoft line and go with Linux. But that isn't well received because of the huge investment in the Microsoft products. We just keep throwing good money after bad.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If virus'es are only scary, it's because the virus writes are amateurs.
Vira could be a lot more smart:
1. multiple targets/entry points
- exploit varying holes in a heterogene environment
2. morphing
- Using nondeterministic compilation you could create vira that would be virtually impossible for scanners to identify -- shape-shifting for every infected computer/file.
3. incubation time
- Vira which we have seen recently don't have much of an incubation time
4. Social engineering
- Look at the "SULFNBK.EXE" (non)vira. Vira that infects this file will probably be a lot more likely to survive for at least a few years.
5. Centralization/automation
- As we adopt digital signatures and auto-updates of programs and operating systems, we are creating the perferct transfer media for vira.
6. All the stuff i didn't think of in 10 mins.
Fortunatly, it seem it's mostly intellectually inept people who make vira (YES, I mean that - if some "real" people did it it would be MUCH! more dangerous).
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
It takes an actual (not threatened) disaster for people to actually care about disaster preparation.
.exe and subsequently infected all of our computers. It took me all day to fix the carnage left by Nimda.
Among the many other hats I wear, I'm the antivirus/worm/trojan/etc. person at my work.
About a month before Nimda hit last year, I'd written strict guidelines to how our company should safeguard itself against viruses. The president, who needed to approve the document before I sent it out, stated that the rules were too strict (don't open attachments you're not expecting/from people you don't know, etc.) and that since he wouldn't follow them, nobody else should either. He ordered me to edit the document so that it was more "friendly" and so I reluctantly rewrote it, and then emailed it out.
Lo and behold, Nimda hits the following month, and it's all over the media by the time I get to work. We were immediately infected with this thing before I even got to work (along with two major clients), all due to the lax guidelines I released the month before. Ironically, our president himself was the one to clicked on the Nimda
After I was done cleaning up Nimda's mess, I dusted off the strict version of my virus guidelines, and demanded that it be implemented immediately. It was made policy, and since Nimda, we have thwarted every other virus attack that has knocked on our door.
Unfortunately, I derived very little satisfaction from saying "I told you so" and smiling smugly into our president's humiliated face.
My comments here are my own; I do not speak for my employer.
Of course, things are different now. In the DOS heydey (including Windows pre-95), most viruses we re textbook viruses. Today, more of them should be defined as trojans and worms. There's no worm that you can see and say "well isn't that cute" as they all are quite damaging in terms of bandwith utilization. But there were/are many true viruses that are not damaging... or not damaging if caught in time. We all like fire, but nobody likes getting burned.
Now, back to the subject. Michaelangelo. Back when it was news some ten (egads!) years ago, McAffe was warning everyone of the impending doom. That year there were many people who lost data, but nowhere near as large as some people had believed. To be fair to the AV experts at the time, most of them gave a range from the small to the abnormally large- but guess which figure reporters used to sell papers?
So, life went on, and nobody was afraid about Michaelangelo anymore. Well, this poor sap was hit by it the *second* time it delivered it's payload (March 6th 1993). I lost of a lot of data that day, and boy was I surprised. Ironically, the data I miss the most is a copy of the virus itself. We all love fire, but we don't love getting burned.
Studying the interesting viruses was, and is, a really educational and enjoyable thing to do. I do not encourage people to distribute viruses. It's a dick thing to do. But there are plenty out there, and they'll forever live in databases like VSUM and whatnot. The game of virus authors versus AV authors is largely over; but it's still neat to see how different viruses copied themselves, and even more interesting the cryptic lines of text that can so often be found in infected executables.
Call me a hopeless virus romantic (not the VD kind), but I still think that's cool.
And holy crap, I just realized that the slashdot blackout already started. I apologize, didn't realize this before I typed this all up.
-bugg
Monday I ran into W32/Klez.h@MM which was no big deal by itself, but the W95/Elkern.cav.c nailed two computers so bad that they needed to be reinstalled.
So far at work we have been lucky and never gotten any of the "Hyped" viruses, just all the hoaxex; however, we tend to get the viruses that are not hyped and make small messes.
I wish that in this case that Klez was all hyped up since then McAfee would have released the DAT file that would detect Elkern. McAfee's website says that DAT 4198 will detect the virus, but they have only released 4198 today!
[End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...] - Larry Wall in Configure from the perl
A lot of people in the IT industry have this problem you describe. It comes from being an expert at something most people don't know a thing about. One of the responses to your comment claims "I'm not a burger flipper".
Well, sorry, you are. Stupid people are stupid people. I HAVE worked in both fast food and IT, and let me tell you, they have the same problems!
IT people call them "end users", fast food calls them "customers". They are the reason you have a job, and thier job is to try to get every advantage out of you that they can. After cleaning up a virus infestation a few times, they learn that it's your job, and your problem. They treat it that way.
I'm sorry that the world isn't perfect for you and that even in your nice "computers" job you have to deal with customers. The rest of the world deals with these same people doing similar stuff and doesn't whine about it nearly as much.
You trust Outlook's uninstaller?
--- What?
Don't even start that crap with me today when I've spent all day working on a professor's laptop that has a virus that required a complete reinstall because, for some mysterious reason, he had shut off his anti-virus software. If he had had it running it would have saved about a days worth of my time, which is far more than the cost of the antivirus software in the first place.
Virii are a big deal and any Windows user without protection is an idiot plain and simple. Antivirus companies make money because their products work pretty well most of the time. Why argue with their ability to make a profit? It's not like they're a monopoly, as there are numerous anti-virus vendors out there.
I guarantee, too, once Linux/BSD virii become more prevalent, that many of you will be purchasing antivirus software from your vendors. And don't give me this "But I can't get infected because I only run my stuff as a regular user..." blah blah blah. Every bit of software you run probably has an exploit in it. Just wait... the script kiddies just haven't been that creative yet.
My sister-in-law is the perfect target for a virus. She emails file after file and I'm sure she opens them without thinking when they first come to her. I mentioned that she is aching to get hit, and she just says we have virus protection. I'm thinking she might not get the update in time for what's around the corner. A little training might help, but there is no compensating for lack of common sense.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Viruses: More Hype than Danger?
I have a feeling whoever submitted this has never had their personal files emailed to everyone they know. I just recieved a file from my sister who did not keep up with the Microsoft Updates. She got the Klez virus, which is activated when you VIEW your mail in Outlook; you don't have to click on any attachments. All the lectures I gave her about not clicking on attachments useless...
And what about viruses that delete files, erase hard drives, etc?
You can't tell me that somebody working at MacAfee or Norton hasn't toyed around with the idea of creating some bad ass virus and unleashing it. Isn't it a little bit odd how quickly they have a fix to it?
With the media the way it is reacting over these viruses, it won't be belong before upstarts will come along, deciminate a virus, then hold a great number of computer users hostage for the price of their software. There was so much publicity in the tracking down of the people who wrote the Melissa virus and the arrest of them, but has there been such a publicized search for NIMBDA? Red Alert? Perhaps the companies are covering their tracks all too well.
this is so cool
This is very cool
And for a nominal price of $200+ called Windows XP.
Is it time already for me to launch winblows.exe already?
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
In an ideal world, at least, EVERY person in the company is a required piece without whom the machine does not function. Naturally, some cogs are more easily replaced than others, of course.
Some people are hard to replace. Exchange admins are not one of them; But real system admins are. In addition, the entire company is screwed without them. They are, in fact, one of the master mechanisms.
There are definitely other people in the company whose departure would have a greater impact than the sysadmin. There are other people a company cannot really afford to lose who have a lesser impact than the systems admin. But ALL of the people in the upper echelon of importance should be listened to carefully by EVERYONE in the company, and ESPECIALLY the other important people in the company.
You can see the sysadmin's position as being highly analogous to HR; They do things which let other people do their jobs and not worry about some kind of infrastructure. Without them, the machine does not get oiled, whether we're talking payroll, or the file server. Making their job harder makes EVERYONE suffer, so there should be an immense incentive to pay attention to both people. In addition, both of them require a great deal of specialized knowledge about the field AND about the site.
So why is it that the HR person is more respected (or I should probably say feared) than the systems admin? Who knows. But great benefits, like not losing all your data, which is ostensibly important to you, can spring from paying attention to the systems admin, so people really should pay attention to them.
Not to mention... everyone knows that the sysadmin hates talking to the unwashed masses of ignorant employees, so if they bother to do so, you can be sure that it is important. So WTF? PAY ATTENTION TO THE SYSTEMS ADMIN. OTHERWISE YOU MIGHT LOSE ALL YOUR DATA. THAT WOULD BE BAD. THE SYSADMIN IS IMPORTANT. THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND. HAPPINESS IS MANDAT-
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
it only makes sense. sales are slowing at mcaffee, lets write a new one and release it from that machine in portugal we compromised last weekend. Some punk kid who has it coming will get the blame and we'll sell lots of software.
by reading this you have been added to their list of possible patsys.
We need to thank the virus authors that they didn't put serious payloads on Nimda or Code Red or I luv you. Thank them while they are in their jail cell of course, but thank them non the less.
As it was they were an annoyance to most, not fatal. They did get the message through to businesses that anti-virus security was serious business. I am sure that we are not the only organization that implemented a comprehensive anti-virus system last year.
It wasn't until we had to spend real man-hours fixing damage done by viruses that the threat was taken seriously and the ROI of the system justifiable by management. It took the potential risk out the equation and made it a simple "duh" cost cutting manuver.
There are two classes of malevolent viruses: nuisance viruses, which do nothing more than cause senseless destruction and "make a name" for the author, and voodoo viruses, those looking to use computing resources on a distributed level.
The first class of virus is only useful when it can attach itself to a a wide area of the population, which is why they're always prevalent in "best of breed" software. Windows, Office, IIS and Outlook are arguably easy to write viruses for, but i content that a lot of the shareware and even open source apps out there are just as easy. Hell, my news reader crashes every time i get a connection to my mail port; it'll probably never be fixed because it's just one guy writing it. But the ease of writing isn't the point -- the point is that these software packages are used by many, many people and even a difficult to exploit bug will have far reaching consequences.
For the voodoo writer, it's not the number of machines so much as the class of machine that's important. You want fast computers with fast connections (dumbass site admins help too). This means you want a critical bug with lots of power.
Neither of these class of author will ever write a pda or cell phone virus. Why? Because there are so many different implementations, each markedly different from the others, that an exploit would only apply to a specific phone on a specific provider. I mean, come on! There's not even a unified protocol for ring tones!
Not to mention that everything is processed by a proxy server before it even hits the phone. Result? A few complaints, and then the proxy is updated to save the phone.
I love FUD.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
A couple of high-profile viruses made my
life miserable in different ways for several
months. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that
it took so long to recognize that a virus was
involved at all - but there was no complete
system failure, simply degraded performance and
flaky behaviour.
I have no problem with anti-virus companies making
lots of noise about the dangers involved. If
Microsoft were truly serious about security they
would include a subscription to McAffee or Norton
in every copy of Windows.
Don't worry about me being paranoiac, I know I am but...
When I was working at another company few years ago, my president was very fiendly and was enjoying teaching us "marketing" strategies. I found it interesting because it teached me at what levels big corporation are willing to brainwash you. One thing he explained me one day was that a common strategy was to "create the need". Well, we all know this strategy, but he explain me to what extend this could go sometimes. Some company would litteraly "create" you problems to further feed you with their main product. So, my point is this one:
We know that AntiVirus company make a lot of advertisment for their product, they are big selling software and seems to be a lucrative market. Am I the only thinking that they may feed the market themself? It's so easy to put virus in circulation, anyone can... Would it not be tempting to them to "inject" a few once in a while and release a "security alert"? Then, letting the media go, the hype boosts itself and scares people enough to boost sales? I'm sure it happens...
I shouldn't skip my medication anymore...
I'd rather be sailing...
--
"Extra Anus Kills Four-Legged Chick" -- Headline
I would have readily agreed that viruses were overhyped - 'til I got Nimda on a home PC after wandering onto an infected website with IE 5.x.
Since I didn't manage to fully disinfect the first time, I ended up rebuilding the entire system from scratch 2x at the cost of at least 10-15 hours of precious weekend labor and much irritation.
But because of the hype I have no-one to blame but myself (and the webmaster who left his site infected months after a Nimda was known, and of course the Nimda author... but we'll leave them out of this!)
Seriously, people who surf w/o virus software are like people who smoke despite the surgeon general's warning: we all know it's dangerous because of the hype. I know I'm unlikely to fuss about overblown warnings for quite some time!
" Perhaps I would be so bitter if I didn't spend 4+ fucking years to get a degree only to end up answering the same remedial questions for careless, rude people. My job is about as challenging and fulfilling as monitoring dirt movement."
Maybe you picked the wrong major.
Or maybe you're just insufficiently motivated to get where you want to be with your current education.
Sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts.
why are people still paying for Antivirus software??? there are several top end proggies out there
I turned off my antivirus software 9 months ago, I use my windows partition daily.
I just ran it again, and suprizingly I don't have a virus.
I have no respect for people who are too stupid to avoid getting a virus, it just takes a half an ounce of prudence.
I live in a giant bucket.
People think about things differently. Really. Sometimes it's hard to understand at how basic a level they think differently.
... well, he may just not have understood you, because you didn't speak his language.
Different ways of thinking are better at different kinds of jobs. You *will not* get a marketer who's both good at convincing a client and good at understanding software. Those are different skills. (What you may get is a model builder who can explain his models to both the programmer and the marketer.)
The four basic skills, as I see them, are:
1) Formal reasoning
2) Model building
3) Preference ranking
4) Goal envisioning
Everybody is best at one of these. Being best at that, means being worst at a predictable other one.
So someone who is best at Preference Ranking will be good at marketing, but lousy at following detailed instructions. And someone who is great at Model building will be lousy at Goal envisioning. (These are the pairs that I find predictable.)
Likewise everyone as a second best skill (which, of course, implies which skill is third best). So some programmers can read a flow chart easily, and other programmers can envision where their code is heading. And these aren't usually the same people (though some people seem to sort of balance on the cusp there).
So Joe in sales doesn't follow your directions not because he's angry at you, and not because he's a real doofus, and not because
As a general rule I find that the non-technical people I deal with don't understand my natural way of speaking. I need to make a model or explain how it fits into their goals to really catch their attention. About 1/4 of the people will just understand the instructions. For about another half you'll need to catch their attention somehow, and then they'll be able to follow the instructions (somehow because two different approaches are needed here).
For the remaining 1/4, following detailed instructions is a real problem. Because that's not the way they think. Best if you can fold everything into a file that you can tell them "Just run this". If that's really impossible, then try to both make a model of what needs to be done (that the instructions fit into naturally) and explain how it fits into their goals. (I always find this so difficult that I generally do the last few people myself.)
But just imagine that you had to spend your time schmoozing... and choosing which people to pay attention to, which to ignore, etc. (I can't explain it correctly, because I don't understand it myself. But I've seen those skilled in the art in action, and I know when something is totally beyond me.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Training? Some of them are trainable. But only some.
Being intelligent is in no way the same as being able to understand computers. That's one kind of intelligence. Some people just don't have that kind. Because a kind of intelligence that confilicts with that is associated with successful manipulation of people, many of them are managers, public relations people, marketers, salesmen, etc.
I'm not saying they aren't intelligent. I couldn't learn to do what they do, and they couldn't learn to do what I do. Our intelligences are different. But they are sufficiently different that attempts to train them in computer understanding (rather then simple manipulation) are destined for failure.
At least that's the way I see it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
..last week saw my work being bombarded by that annoying Outlook exploit and automated warning messages that were being sent to the wrong person because the From: line is taken from the infected person's contact list. And our student labs pick up at least a dozen viruses every day (usually about 3 or 4 different ones). Yeah, it's hype.
There have only ever been a handful of Macintosh viruses, excluding Word Macro Viruses. (Which are entirely due to M$'s incompentance.) Yes, I have a virus scanner, but I've only EVER found one infected file in the 17 years I've used Macs.
Dog is my co-pilot.
No, of course not. Real network admins know everything about their networks by watching the link lights on their switches. Since they can see the contents of the packets that are being sent and recieved, all they need to do is decode the packet in real time. Junior admins occassionally have problems mastering the ip checksum algorithms, but well-practiced senior net admins can track thousands of concurrent TCP connections. It's a simple matter to determine what the network is being used for just by watching the blinking lights.
And you thought those light were just to look pretty. Ha!
Now that they can claim it's all hype they don't have to make secure software anymore.
The later versions of MS-DOS came with MSAV, and Windows 3.x came with MWAV.
MSAV - MicroSoft AntiVirus
MWAV Microsoft Windows AntiVirus
Thing is, they sucked, and I had no idea where to get updates, or even if they were updatable at all, whereas I had a fresh evaluation floppy of McAffee every month for free!
I have no idea why they canned their anti-virus.It would be very useful to most windows lusers to have an anti-virus installed by default on their boxen. It would sure save me a lot of trouble... and probably put a stop to the ever-growing email worm epidemic.Just have it auto-update itself like the rest of XP and you're home free.
Ha. Actually, Counterpane, Bruce Schneier's company, offers realtime live security monitoring by humans; I presume even they view the traffic in some interpreted, filtered state.
I meant merely that hopefully a Net Admin has a faster, more comprehensive, reliable and detailed source than CNN, such as CERT, some other mailing lists, or their AV vendor.
While they may not cripple the internet, virii cost corporations ALOT OF MONEY. I work in the service industry, and EVERY DAY I am at some company to clean virii off of machines. These aren't large companies with IT people, these are the small business where every machine gets decimated by virii that can't be cleaned with wiping the system, and if they are cleanable, the files are OFTEN corrupted and of no use. Of course, these are also small business that never thought of backup. Virii might be good for my business, but when these companies are paying me $65 an hour (or my boss) to clean them when they get them every time (because that handy antivirus we put on their machines last time hasn't been updated since we left), it gets expensive.
Obviously the guy is pissed..and frustrated. The point here is that the work they do is enabled by the tools they use which is in our care. If you rented a room in a non-smoking house and smoked all the time you'd get kicked out eventually. Your reasons for doing this: whether, stupidity, assumption of intellectual superiority, addiction, etc..is not the issue. There should be consequences for fouling up the works. If managment cannot control the situation it is unfair to assume that the SA can do any better. As far as talking down to users... There are some users who will browbeat, circumlocute and sneak their way into trouble consistently. If managment will not act then as self defense I tend to treat them like shit. I can empathize with the guy to some degree: If you are willing to take home a paycheck you should be willing to obey all the rules set out by IT staff towards enabling and keeping your environment working. Without this the end user and policy is the problem and the SA attitude is a natural outgrowth of the situation. A strong, policied and enforced environment is productive and secure, a loose "do what you want" environment is recipe for disaster unless everyone has the technical acumen of the SA.
But yeah, I've never bothered with AV software (or security beyond the LAN being firewalled) and the extend of damage viruses have caused me is the inconvenience of no longer wanting to leave drives shared-writable
Ahh those were days... you could leave your front door unlocked and just copy anything to your computer from anywhere transparently.
If the past year's viruses were all hype, I have to wonder how serious a virus has to be before they actually claim them as dangerous.
Thanks to SirCam, I personally received two documents from Fortune 500 companies (which were infected) with draft proposals for new products and the markets they were targetted for. I get to know the plans of a big company even before their CEO does.
Thanks to CR/Nimda, I get to see at least 100 probes a day trying to get to my personal web server. On more active days, that number is more like 500. And this is now, over 8 months after the virus was at its peak.
I know of at least a few administrators (that work at various companies) that had to put in about a week to get the "I love you" virus under control. And that virus didn't even have a nasty payload.
Mind you, they could have been much worse. The simple fact is that most of these viruses were born from stupid bugs (which in most cases were simply overlooked) and hence were somewhat easier to fix.
As of about a month ago, I was able to take advantage of the fact that CodeRed is still out there wasting bandwidth. I benefitted from it because it's continually trying to spread itself, which generates zillions of unanswered ARP requests.
I was looking for an unused IP address to *borrow* (for use on a non-DHCP-enabled laptop), so I started a packet sniffer and waited for an unanswered ARP to go by -- in less than a minute, I had my new IP address.
Thanks CodeRed!
400th comment!! Viruses!!! LINUX!!
In the 9 years I've been playing around with computers, I haven't gotten a single virus. This despite the fact that I've been running Windows and Outlook for years.
Really, it's not that hard... don't open attachments unless you're expecting 'em, don't enable VBScript... no real need for it anyways!
I have been downloading innumerable Terabytes of various software since 1993 when the Mosaic browser was around. I have never had a virus infection on my computer. And, still, I have mostly used DOS/Win computers until the last few years when I switched to Linux.
;)
I know, I am not statistically significant, but still...
By your logic, you're focusing the burden of responsibility to the admin and not the end user. So I guess it's MY fault they opened the attatchment. I guess it's MY fault that I have to order a new laptop everytime this paticular sales lady goes out on travel and returns with a mangled laptop because "It's too much trouble to carry it on" This paticular lady i'm thinking of DESTROYED 9 laptops in 3 months! You would think MAYBE after the first one she would wise up BUT SHE KILLED 8 MORE.
Often, as in this example it's the same end (l)users who do stupid things time and time again. But typically the sysadmin isn't in a position to say "you break it, then fixing it is at the bottom of the priority list".
Easy to say when you have a good job. I consider them PEOPLE when they HELP ME HELP THEM to solve their problem. When they are lazy ("oh, just send someone up. I don't have time to sit on the phone all day."), unecessarily vague ("Is the Internet down?"), or rude, they are not people.
There is the all time classic "dosn't work". Including in cases where the computer is working perfectly, just that GIGO applies.
Do your job properly and stiop whinging.
Tom.
Oh arse
hey,
it was very neccesary to do Y2K updates in a lot of cases. maybe the world wouldn't have crawled to a halt but there would've been a *lot* of people complaining because they weren't born, didn't need to receive a paycheck, etc "because the computer says so". those problems needed fixes, be it before or after 1-1-2000.
the fact that the IT industry earned plenty money because of the Y2K problem might be a ground to distrust some of the stories on Y2K but it *was* neccesary to fix Y2K!
But typically the sysadmin isn't in a position to say "you break it, then fixing it is at the bottom of the priority list".
YES!! Exactly! If you spend %15 of your time on one user in a month because they constantly are breaking something, other people get jaded that they are not recieving enough attention. Collecting all the parts, getting the shipping, calling the vendor for a RMA#, shipping the thing back and imaging the software back onto the machine when the machine comes back takes TIME. Time that has to be balanced out or otherwise it just put's the admin in a position where he/she might be taking precious IT resources away from other departments. If you cannot balance yourself out between all the departments in a company because of one person, i'm sorry but they're an asshole for not being consciences. They're not thinking about the time it takes me to replace the equipment, the cost to the company, the CEO's and salespeoples time for making the money to pay for the damn equipment in the first place.
This buffer is for notes you don't want to save, and for Lisp evaluation.
If you want to create a file, visit that file with C-x C-f,
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