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IRC Networks Unite in Fight Against Fizzer Worm
Dave writes "Over the past few days, IRC Networks across the internet have felt the brunt of the Fizzer worm. In an unusual display of geek solidarity, representatives from dozens of IRC Networks, including EFNet, IRCNet and DALnet, have gathered to create a Fizzer Task Force. Interesting, and mostly productive results have occurred so far from such a meeting of the IRC minds."
Not to point fingers, but as we all know IRC networks are a major conduit for the distribution of warez. I'm not living in a glass house here, so I'll admit that I've gotten viruses from "packs" downloaded through IRC networks. It's good to see that these guys are coming together and helping to stem the spread of this virus. Unfortunately, I've heard nothing from the KaZaA guys in this line, and they are probably much worse than the IRC people (all their clients are Windows platforms, most of their users are completely clueless, etc.) It takes some skills (not much, but some) to get stuff off IRC. Any jackass can download from KaZaA. That's where the real work needs to be done in order to stop this virus cold.
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
They'll do that, just a soon as we convince them to stop using IE, Outlook, and/or Windows because supperior products exsist.
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Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. To the very best of my knowledge I haven't been infected by any virus or trojan since the early 90s when I didn't have Internet access and fast virus updates.
But even running around nekkid, I don't think I'd have caught more than a handful of viruses to begin with. Why the hell is it that people open up all the crap executable stuff they get? I think the best hope is a new generation that has grown up with SPAM, viruses etc. and don't fall for that kind of bullshit. Teaching old dogs new tricks doesn't work, but they will die eventually...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So, what did Microsoft do wrong that allowed this to happen? 200 words or less. 5 points off each for use of either "dancing monkeyboy" or "Borg".
I wouldn't call mIRC bad software. It seems that the l337 crowd thinks that all easy software = bad software because it allows everyone do what they do.
"We learned it the hard way, you should do it too"
I would say better products actually pre-exsisted all the examples. The difference it marketing, cost, and positioning. Mac OS and maybe the Amiga I would say were better than Windows and pre-dated it for the most part (yes I know how far back Win 1.1 went, but I mean when people actually cared it exsisted). Netscape was definately better than IE up until at least 4, I would argue 5. As for email, Eudoras not newcomer. People are lazy and/or uneducated for the most part. They had no desire to expand beyond what their computers came with or didn't know how. The way Windows had it integrated it certainly looked(s) like that was the proper/only way to do it. Bribing/strong arming the ISPs didn't hurt eaither.
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Yeah but those pasty guys that are experts on Star Trek lore and know wierd backwaters of Perl can also remove your systems/isp/country from the net without breaking into a sweat.
:)
And trust me you can cause more pain to more people by dumping thier net connection than you ever could with a swat team.
First there's the pain for lusers that find thier mail IM and file swappers don't work, then there's the pain in the call centre when harrased techs try to explain to consumers what's going on, then there's the pain felt by the BOFH's with management hovering over thier shoulder, then there is further pain caused by the many minor bumps and niggles and repeats as the systems cope (or not) with the backlog built up in the down time. And after all that, if it was a good one, there are the recriminations on support boards, the calls for compensation, customers leaving, no end of replanning from the management team.
Ahhhh
The beauty is that a good DDOS is a gift that just keeps on giving.
Truly Cthulhu is amongst us
Who knows. One thing is for sure though: by publicising their intentions of sabotaging files on Kazaa and distributing viruses, they opened themselves up to such speculation.
from symentac 'Keylogs all keystrokes to an encrypted file %windir%\iservc.klg.'
It stores encrypted data on your PC. You cannot use any method to decrypt this data to determine what keystrokes were collected and potentially transmitted.
Gotta love stupid laws.
comment directly in my journal
If Windows came with a p2p application built into the OS, people would use that no matter how bad it was.
I've never ran any sort of anti-virus... Ever. And I've never had a virus... ...that I noticed.
Just because you don't think you have a virus doesn't mean you don't have one that's good at hiding. Try loading an AV and seeing what it finds. It might do you some good.
Personally, I have an updated one that I keep disabled most of the time except when I get up and leave it on; then I tell it to scan. Hasn't turned up anything. Good sign...
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Netscape was better than IE prior to the 3's. Version 3 was pretty equal on both and then IE blew Netscape away when it came to version 4. Netscape 4 was a blight on society with some of the worst standards support of any browser prior and since.
Check me on this: Didn't Microsoft start giving away IE BEFORE Netscape 4? If so:
Don't you think cutting off Netscape's revenue stream might have had something to do with the amount of Quality Assurance they could afford to do to their followon releases? In addition to pressuring them to release it early to try to get a little more cash in house before the dry up and blow away?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way