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MyDoom Seeks to Destroy Antivirus Firms
Khoo writes "Worm writers are threatening to attack antivirus companies F-Secure, Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee.
In the latest version of MyDoom--MyDoom.AE--the authors embedded a message ridiculing rival worm Netsky and promising to attack the antivirus companies."
Maybe they can destory Live Update so that Symantec can finally create a copy that isn't a resource hog.... wait....
*sighs*
nevermind
UID 1000000 is just around the corner.
The only way to destroy Anti-virus firm is to stop writing viri. The more the viri, the more $$$ for AV companies.
I have OS X and us users need to quit trash talking. To many of us don't use antivirus software. And, yes, despite it being an amazingly secure setup there are holes as in any system. So, lets not provoke the smart virus writers who can write one for OS X if they put enough time and effort in. Lets stay low key as long as possible
Evolution or ID?
You turned every legit hacker out there into a potential terrorist. You're handing the net over to authoritarian politicians who are not interested in real security or the free flow of information. Fucking idiots. Why don't you burn down libraries for chump change? Same thing...
We don't really want to boost the ego of those jacks, do we?
And hopefully, Taco won't repost the same story in a few days...
<sarcasm/>
The threat of a DOS attack is quite mild to actually writing truly malicious code. Something along the lines of repartitioning the harddrive and reformat the drives upon reboot. The viruses that we have seen have been mainly to slow or disconnect the victim from the network. I feel there could be worse scenarios that could happen besides what we have seen thus far.
Two words: Script Kiddy.
clueless lusers also help propagate this crap, any halfassed attempt at virus creation will result in a significant number of infections, because users have become increasing dim-witted and moronic as the years have progressed.
Well more availability of internet access helps too I guess, but I prefer the former hypothesis.
Just so they can use their produts to protect themselfs from viruses. I would trust an Anti-Virus Company more if they were runinning OpenBSD or some other Secure OS. Yea sure they make anti-virus for windows but that is because they know that windows is insecure. Becideds if someone wants a virus to spread they just kill the updates for the anti-virus.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is the very reason why depending upon anti-virus software is dangerous. Anti-virus software causes people to become less careful about computer security. Becoming less careful about computer security because you have anti-virus software is something like driving less carefully because you believe that airbags will keep you safe in the event of a car accident.
Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to just revamp the whole IT infrastructure.
...) and up-to-date legislation to procecute virus writer and so on.
....) and move to something decent (PowerPC? Heck, even MS goes to PowerPC for the future XBOX, so why not for PC's...)
Let's say all companies in all countries, the governements and the IT suppliers join hands and pay into one large "IT fund" or donate research time and development for a joint new technology.
At the same time governements all over the world passes legislation to increase the reponsibility of IT vendors like e.g. Microsoft (faster bug fixes required by law, free bug fixes, longer free support, better en safer Windows code,
We use these measures to:
1) Get rid of x86/WinTel and all its legacy technology and software (no more ISA, no more IRQ, no more Win/DOS compatibility,
2) Get rid of Windows altogether and create a decent replacemnt for it without legacy and backwards compatability
3) All governements by Apple Machines and Mac OS X at huge discounts: already a huge step forward in security of our personal information and files.
I think this would enhance competition, drive the economy forward, foster future new developments and maybe get rid of monopolies and get decent competition in the IT market... and be a lot cheaper than the combined cost of all anti-virus licenses, and hidden costs of lost productivity and fall-out of current attacks...
I know... I know... I'm dreaming eh... Some forces would be against this... Damn....
Don't ever mention again internet and secure in one sentence. it isn't secure and never will be. Just as commuting to work will never be secure. There are only different levels of security: if you go by car (Windows), bike (Amiga ;)), bus (Linux) or train (OS X).
Yes, I would, it's nothing they could prevent.
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
A virus that performs a Denial of Service attack against the "automatic update" servers used to keep the client av software up to date?
You then have a virus that is attacking the 1 thing that can "defeat" it, thus the virus "wins" as it has effectivly knocked out the source of the antidote (providing the virus is able to spread at a very fast rate for the initial 12 or so hours).
There is quite a lot of research on the web regarding the speed at which viruses spread and the # of hosts infected in the first X hours, which makes for interesting reading.
To do it properly the virus shouldnt have any hardcoded IP addresses or domain names but instead seek the server name(s) from the (registry|av-binary|where ever it is stored). Other virus have failed in the past because l33t master coders were stupid enough to hard code a list of IP addresses.
A fast spreading virus that could do as described IMO would be a truely "successful" ground breaking virus, and it would certainly be interesting to see how the AV companies react to that.
(Im NOT suggesting, nor encouraging it to be done, just looking at an idea from a problem solving / technical implementation POV).
Jason
Do you want to use the antivirus product of a company whose network goes down due to a virus?
Any company's computers, even the best AV writers, are vulnerable to 1st day infections. Any company could get slammed if an unknown virus is introduced directly into their networks. So what would matter to me is not that they were taken down, but how quickly they are able to get their systems back online. That's indicative of how quickly they can get updates online and out to the rest of us who may be suffering the same fate.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Let's not over-simplify things.
For a start, not everyone that writes a virus is an idiot. Yes, there are hundreds of script kiddies re-using someone else's virus code, but somewhere down the line, there's a black hat who is coming up with some pretty smart code. Let's not group together all virus writers as idiots and thus underestimate the threat they pose, which is probably greater than ever.
Secondly, they may have little command of the English language, but there's a fair chance they are not native English speakers. The majority of new viruses these days seem to be eminating from Russia, China, and South Korea (by no coincidence, the relatively unpoliced areas of the internet). Don't take their poor English syntax as a sign of stupidity!
It seems we may be in grave danger of tarring all virus writers with the same brush. These guys may be black hats but they are not all stupid. Let's not leave ourselves vulnerable by assuming that they are.
apterous.org
That is also the reason no such viruses infect computers on a large scale - just like parasites in the nature. A parasite that kills it's host and prevents it from spreading will in effect limit it's own spreading of genes/offspring... Now, a virus that spreads epidemically like the recent ones has, and at a given point destroys boot sectors or partition tables, now that would be funny..
Yeah, well, you are talking about regimes where the consequences of being discovered are a certain and painful death, I think being paranoid is probably pretty good advice...
But XORing against a random byte stream is not very good advice, because it is much more difficult than you might expect to generate such a random byte stream. Hint: The random number generator that comes with your compiler is not good enough.