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Microsoft Mail Worms Gang War?

cuzality writes "The media is now beginning to suggest that this recent onslaught of new viruses (with new versions of major-impact viruses being found daily) the result of a virus gang turf war, kinda like the India/Pakistan virus conflict, in which official Pakistani sites were savaged by such infamous groups as Indian Snakes and Indian Hackers Club. The gangs are shooting fast and loose: variations of the big ones are being discovered daily (as of March 4, we are up to MyDoom.H, Netsky.F, and Beagle.K), and in the space of three hours on Wednesday morning, five variants of these three were first discovered. Typically these viruses (or more correctly, worms) do little damage to the infected computer, intent mostly on spreading far and wide, and sometimes inflicting DoS on some poor evil empire."

37 of 609 comments (clear)

  1. well... by Savatte · · Score: 5, Funny

    Since Microsoft is in Seattle, this could be a real West Side Story.

    1. Re:well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      get your singing voices ready... WORM:
      "I like to propagate in America!
      DoS by me in America!
      Network is down in America
      Download me in America!"

    2. Re:well... by Bjimba · · Score: 4, Funny

      When you're a 1337, you're a l33t all the way,
      From your first kiddie script, till you r00t DEA

      --
      --- question = 0xFF; // optimized Hamlet
    3. Re:well... by krzysztof · · Score: 3, Funny

      MyDoom H
      I've just got a worm named MyDoom H
      And suddenly this game
      Will never play the same for me.

      MyDoom I
      I just saw a worm named MyDoom I
      And suddenly I see
      A blue screen staring back at me!

      MyDoom J!
      I don't hear any mp3s playing
      All is dark and I better start praying

      MyDoom K,
      I just got a worm named MyDoom K...

    4. Re:well... by slaker · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dear kindly Peter Norton,
      You gotta understand
      It's just our hacker egos
      That gets us outta hand.
      Our friends are all spammers
      Our teachers teach VB
      Holy jebus that's why we are 'leet!

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
  2. Won't be over soon, either by Matey-O · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Plenty of letters left in the alphabet" - J. L. Picard

    --
    "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
  3. Poor evil empire by NetDanzr · · Score: 4, Funny
    "...intent mostly on spreading far and wide, and sometimes inflicting DoS on some poor evil empire."

    Actually, the evil empire isn't all that poor; it's got several billion dollard in cash. And the poor wannabe empire isn't poor either; apparently it got a $86 million cash injection, thanks to the evil empire.

    1. Re:Poor evil empire by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oracle makes more cash per dullard, but Microsoft has more dullards. Proof that volume is the answer.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Virus gangs by Zangief · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...kinda like the India/Pakistan virus conflict, in which official Pakistani sites were savaged by such infamous groups as Indian Snakes and Indian Hackers Club...

    Seems like virus writers also got oursourced to India!!

  5. Re:How is this an "ask slashdot"? by FrostedWheat · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where's the question?

    Dunno, but the answer's 42.

  6. Re:"some poor evil empire..." by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny
    is getting gangbanged. sux.

    Yeah, but they've been secretly building their own Deathstar, which is hidden behind the Moon, for years now. I'm not so worried about the Evil Empire using it as when it gets 0wn3d.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  7. Re:"some poor evil empire..." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    SCO?

  8. oh great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    all your computers are belong to us, no US, NO US, NONO US!!!

  9. Re:Warnings... by Dave2+Wickham · · Score: 5, Funny
    You mean like...
    Dear user of "Co.uk" mailing system,

    We warn you about some attacks on your e-mail account. Your computer may
    contain viruses, in order to keep your computer and e-mail account safe,
    please, follow the instructions.

    Further details can be obtained from attached file.

    Cheers,
    The Co.uk team http://www.co.uk
    ?
  10. Re:Turf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Think of your WinBlows as your house with all doors locked, but with all Windows (too funny)opened. Pretty pointless and very tempting target.

    I could not resists...

    Your friendly non-WinBlows user.

  11. Re:So move to a better neighborhood by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    So you're saying I should move to Mars?

  12. Re:latest breed by leifm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah we apparently got that. Seems a bit odd to me that a worm can propagate when you have to enter a key to run it, for god's sake that's like getting a grenade in the mail with a note saying 'Pull this pin and hold'.

    --

    "Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
  13. Re:I would like to point out... by tcd004 · · Score: 4, Funny

    My god! Look what it did to my website!

    Tcd004

  14. Re:latest breed by gregarican · · Score: 3, Funny
    My company's mail server is running Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition. Although it couldn't scan the password-protected (hence encrypted) ZIP attachments of the latest Beagle variant it did report these failures as errors and quarrantined the attachments as a result. Thank God.

    What's pitiful is how the AV service automatically updates its virus definitions daily. But at the rate these variants are coming out I am manually updating in the middle of the workday as well. I almost get misty eyed back when Microsoft-based threats were just relatively minor nuisances like Word macro viruses!

  15. Evil empire? by Facetious · · Score: 3, Funny

    "...and sometimes inflicting DoS on some poor evil empire." Or in the case of sco.com, an evil feifdom.

    --
    Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
  16. Re:Viruses? by Kaa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine if e-mail was just plain old ASCII text with no attachment support. *sigh*

    YOU HAVE NOW RECEIVED THE UNIX VIRUS

    This virus works on the honor system:

    If you're running a variant of unix or linux, please forward this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your files at random.

    --

    Kaa
    Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
  17. {sigh} Preview, preview by ashitaka · · Score: 1, Funny

    s/Dop/Drop
    s/nad/and

    --
    If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
  18. Re:Yeah, it's a gang war alright... by danlor · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh yea? I got you beat!

    We had and emplyee actually gather a croud around her desk to watch her open it. They were all very disappointed to see that our virus filters had stripped it!

  19. Re:How is this an "ask slashdot"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    here is the question: how lame do you have to be to base all you ego trips and eliteness on how many windows boxes you can infect? Its like a little kid bragging that they can count to twenty.

  20. Re:Yeah, it's a gang war alright... by orthogonal · · Score: 2, Funny

    One simple thing average users can do is to give people they communicate with some special keyword they should always add to messages they send you with an attachment. It doesn't have to be anything special - even a company name would d

    I tried that but it didn't work for me.

    Do you think I shouldn't have chosen the word "Pwned"?

  21. Re:Puttin' it down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    l3rn 2 wr173 j00 +w4+

  22. Re:Little damage? by RickoniX · · Score: 3, Funny

    Great, tell everyone my password why don't you

    --
    Geekleak.com - Silly name, serious geeks
  23. Re:Instead of a pissing contest by Pastis · · Score: 2, Funny

    We should apply this comment to the slashdot crowd...

  24. Nothing happened. Did I do something wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I've gotten over a hundred copies of Beagle over the past week or so. I've opened several. They haven't done a damn thing. Obviously, Linux simply isn't capable of running the really popular Windows apps. ;-)

  25. Re:Insightful? by rsidd · · Score: 3, Funny

    Although this sentence is not a question, it ends in a question mark?

  26. Can I ask you a question? by Cumstien · · Score: 5, Funny

    A question, what is it?

    It's an interrogative statement used to test knowledge, but that's not important right now.

  27. Offshoring stoppage? by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe this virus war will tie up all the developers in India and Pakistan who would otherwise take our jobs.

  28. Re:I would like to point out... by geek4ever · · Score: 1, Funny

    IT MADE YOU ADVERTISE $50 GIFT CARDS! OH MY GOD!

    --


    Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
  29. Re:I would like to point out... by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 3, Funny

    Here's a conspiracey theory for you...

    Indian virus writers are writing virues to increase call volumes so more companies will outsource their anwering centers to India...

    More likely some punk somewhere gets a charge off the idea that they alone can cause world wide mayhem...

    --
    Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
  30. Now the virii are fighting each other by dtjohnson · · Score: 2, Funny

    Apparently, they didn't find Microsoft enough of a challenge.

  31. Re:Insightful? by Ed+Avis · · Score: 2, Funny

    Obligatory Futurama quotation:

    Fry: I'm good at video games and bad at everything else. That's why I wish life were more like a video game.

    Farnsworth: Can you put that in the form of a question?

    Fry: Uh, what if that thing I said?

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  32. Re:Warnings... by DonGar · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm part owner and the system admin for a 3 person company. I find it somewhat surreal to get email from 'staff@bgb.cc' when I AM the tech staff for BGB.

    --
    plus-good, double-plus-good