Slashdot Mirror
Worm Exploit Distributed by Advertising Network
Zocalo writes "Given that a lot of Slashdot readers also check The Register, it's important to note that their Internet advertising provider, Falk AG, was compromised by the BOFRA exploit yesterday. The Falk AG service has been suspended by The Register and a statement from Falk AG is due on Monday. The upshot is that if you visited the Register yesterday morning and use IE as your browser, then you probably need to run a full virus scan with up to date data files. Of course, those of us running other browsers and something like AdBlock have nothing to worry about. Again." You're OK for now if you're running SP2. There's also a good security writeup about the problem.
Is Fist Fuck.
We all know that The Register is as anti-Microsoft as they come.
So they deliberately spread a worm to push the point home.
Big deal.
Why was it necessary to praise AdBlock in the writeup considering it would not have made a difference if the user had it installed or not? Even if AdBlock were responsible for preventing a user from getting a virus this time, that's hardly enough to make up for the theft of services and fraud that people who use it commit every day.
Web pages like slashdot are available to you on the following basis: load our advertisements which bring us revenue that allow us to pay for bandwidth, salaries, etc., and we will also make available to your our content, free of charge. Extensions and programs like AdBlock are tantamount to theft; you are acquiring the content but not "paying" for it by loading the advertisements.
If you find a site's ads to be so intrusive as to make the page unviewable, don't go back. I doubt anyone forced you to go there in the first place.
audioLibre - freedom of music
The Register is targetted at an audience of IT professionals. Any IT professional who's dumb enough to still be using Internet Explorer in November 2004 deserves whatever he gets.
Or, yet another reason to use the latest version of IE. You'd have problems using old versions of Firefox, too. Do you think that Firefox has never had security issues?
Interesting... the majority of business desktops are still Windows, so I suspect a majority of business users and admins are still using Windows on some level. And WTF do you get off saying, "he". There are a few female IT professionals.
Y'know, Windows really, really, really sucks as an operating system if it's not capable of updating itself while running other software (ESPECIALLY since you can't easily exit the GUI). Does anyone know exactly why this is? Is Windows incapable of updating files while they are open, or does its scheduler suffer from major, serious bugs? What particular aspect of Windows precludes it from updating without devoting my entire computer to the (overly lengthy) process?
I know it's gotten better, but it's still absolutely laughable compared to Linux, Solaris, etc. Why exactly is the data stored on the filesystem seemingly not independent of the currently running processes, until they are restarted? It seems like Windows has some serious fundamental technical failings that should have been addressed like 10 years ago.
How about blame the person/people that actually developed the exploit, and the societies that breed this kind of destructive mentality.
I resent having to have my choice of OS/Browser/whatever dictated to me not on the grounds of functionality, but by how easily it's going to get attacked (not that in this case I'd choose IE over FireFox anyway, but that's beside the point), and having my valuable system resources taken up by having to have a virus scanner run permanently in the background.