Slashdot Mirror
New Microsoft Worm Coming Soon?
Seft sent in a solid article running on the BBC discussing the next potential worm explosion on the heels of a recent
Security Bulletin from Microsoft. The article is a somewhat general topic piece on worms in general.
No excuse on this one. It's not like Blaster happened eons ago, and this is virtually the same type of flaw. Patch your systems.
So more companys like Air Canada can get hit and blame it on the worm makers, yet never blame it on there stupid IT department that had three weeks to patch the system and never did.
Actually Sino-US relations have been constantly improving going all the way back to Nixon. Carter also did a lot to further relations. There are also plenty of US businesses operating in China (some of which have been mentioned on Slashdot in the past).
I think it's another blatant attempt by the media to instill fear in the public about the notion of another huge worm attack on people's computers. I guess the BBC wants credit for the "We said it here first people" catch phrase, then why not have the BBC post an article warning about "The countdown to the next Windows security hole has begun" (I'll start a pool to see who correctly date when a new security hole is found), or the next version update of the Apache webserver long before anyone else can or does, or the oh so coveted hacked webpage that will be coming soon ("The countdown to the next hacked webpage has begun". This reminds me of MSNBC's folly of accidentally posting the pre-made death articles of some high-profile celebrities and political figures.
1.Ride on the General Public's Fear
2.Feed the Fear
3.?
4.Profit!
Let me make sure I understand. There's a front page article about a potential Microsoft worm that may be created using an eight day old security vulnerability, but no articles at all about the Sendmail vulnerability discovered today, or the SSH Vulnerability discovered yesterday? What am I missing?
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
Mod me down, troll/flamebait, I know.
However, mod me up if you feel that this might make people start patching their systems.
Get your own free personal location tracker
A worm/virus that trashes it's host doesn't do a good job of propagating. These sorts of programs can do so at a 'time bomb' setpoint, if the designer feels the virus/worm will have propagated widely by that time, of course.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Yeah, like Walmart would ever survive without cheap T shirts and plastic crap from China. Forget about it.
Start thinking of us that operate in the real world. Cocky statements like "We've had plenty of warning about this, so it's only the criminally unprepared that will be hit right" sound outright stupid. The patch was released last Wednesday. To coordinate business departments, users and techincal staff along with testing requirements doesn't happen overnight. You do your best to patch as fast as possible and take steps to add a firewall layer but you have to deal with business requirements. Switching from Microsoft won't solve this problem either....OpenSSH anyone?
However, I don't mind Microsoft security problems, it keeps food on my table.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I laughed when I read that
"However, these products are no longer supported. Users of these products are strongly encouraged to upgrade to later versions."
Does MS really expect the average Win95/98 user to read that and think 'Oh! I better go out and get me a copy of that Winders XP. It may have viruses and worms but at least I'll be supported.'
Other way around, son. US business is so hopelessly dependent on cheap Chinese labour and just in time manufacturing that there'd be chaos if China was embargoed.
I got the Michelangelo virus back in the day: One morning I came into work and there was paint all over my ceiling...
Anyway, I believe the days of boot sector trashing viruses are over. It's much better to root and take control of a large number of systems than to indiscriminately destroy one or two. Recent discussion regarding the SoBig variants illustrates this point (ie, possible use as a Distributed SPAM engine). There are already numerous viruses out there which allow the perpetrator to orchestrate a massive DDoS.
The "evolution" of which you speak is merely an evolution of desire and sophistication by the creators of such malware.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
A virus/worm that did this wouldn't make as big of a splash when the payload executes. Anti-virus companies would have updated virus defs out there within a day or two of distribution and a lot of people would become disinfected before the symptoms kicked in. Plus, the more damaging the payload, the wider the news will reach and people without anti-virus software would use free removal tools.
-Lucas
To be honest, that sort of worm isn't the one I would be worried about. The silent killer is going to be much more nasty, and it's a matter of time before somebody writes one (if they haven't already).
Consider this for a possibility: A worm that just sits quietly on the system. It does nothing obvious that would get it noticed by users. Once a day it finds a random Excel spreadsheet. It opens the spreadsheet and picks a random cell. It alters the value of that cell by 10%.
Lets hope no one is actually stupid or arrogant enough to try crap like that (but given humanity, realistically it's a matter of time)
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The worst would probably one that was totally inconspicuous, but occasionally doubled or halved a dollar amount. (And it would be really nice in Excel.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
constantly improving
Over the long haul, yes.
But there were some points of tension when the U.S. cruddy intelligence led to the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and when a U.S. spyplane flying off the coast made an emergency landing on a Chinese island.
Meanwhile, the government there is learning that it can divert attention from inconvenient issues (like corruption between the military and industry, lack of an open democratic process) by exploiting nationalistic sentiment (We vs They).
This is in the same grand tradition that is done in the United States and in Russia, so the rest of the world can feel safe knowing that all 3 of the largest nuclear superpowers are populated by emotional peasants.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
...is not spend your tmie ranting about how evil MS is or how bad or what not.
Spend your time and energy making sure everyone patches. This is so simple to beat. Just patch.
I want to note that all NT based Windows versions, at least since 4.0 are vulnerable. This means, this hole was sleeping from years, it could exist since late 1995 or earlier, if it wasn't introduced into NT4 in a SP. This means, also, people had a giant security issue along seven years, waiting for somebody to exploit it. I'm not sure how open source software can be affected in similar ways (anybody remember any case out there?), but I feel better thinking that open source allows a faster cycle for bug and vulnerability depuration.
Got Pike?
Three. One major education institution here (of which IT composes a large part) had their entire network comprimised. The professor (head of the IT Department) was on the radio waffling on about how bad it was but failed to answer why they had not applied patches until six weeks after the MS announcment. Of course, they applied the patches after the outbreak in the Uni. when the panic hit. WTF are they teaching there?
2.The current announcment from MS was on the 10th of Sept. The BBC article appeared 8 days later (wow, they're on the ball!) and has FUD written all over it. You can just hear the Editor; "Quick! Microsoft announced a vulnerability over a week ago". "Get someone to write something". "People soak up this shit!" 3. I am not a huge fan of MS but, while their security doesn't seem to have improved their notifications/patches have improved, immensely. So good on em!Where ever I go, there I am
So, was it perjury or treason? You decide.
Either way it's not a set of ethics that would induce me to resume business with them ... ever.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Wouldnt a virus that is based in small parts be the best. Actually have it delivered through cookies, where most people dont change default settings allows it to put the first files needed to collect the other cookies, and have it deliverd by putting it on a widely used server like google. where it would slowly and inconspicuously form. And since windows likes to store cookies even when you try to get rid of them the people who do mess with their cookies settings are still infected. so really it would still take place when i think of it. But anyways, eventually it would collect and activate and in its activation(which would be on a syncronized date) would go about infection non infected systems while it slowly messes up peoples pcs, and servers. It would be completely under the radar and compact. You really wouldnt even need it to infect other peoples pcs other than the ones infected with the tainted cookies really think about how many people access google then how many servers read those cookies and collect them...