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CA Warns Of Massive Botnet Attack
m4dm4n wrote to mention a story running on The Register which describes a coordinated malware attack designed to establish a massive botnet. From the article: "The attack involves three different Trojans - Glieder, Fantibag and Mitglieder - in a co-ordinated assault designed to establish a huge botnet under the control of hackers. Computer Associates reckons that access to the compromised PCs is for sale on a black market, at prices as low as five cents per PC."
1. Get every compromised PCs to join the same botnet.
2. White-hat hack into the botnet.
3. Tell all compromised PCs to wipe their hard drives.
4. No more compromised PCs! Well... not for a while anyway!
Moving to a new platform/OS without knowing all the ins and outs, could be just as dangerous as staying with Windows.
I remember my early days with Linux, back when I used to futz around and actually made my machines less secure, before I learned a great deal more about the OS and its features.
I am not saying that switching is bad, I am just saying that it is important to know what you are switching to before making the switch.
Nobody should get caught with their firewall down holding their LAN cable in their hand...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
OK, these things need to be taken seriously, but any press release needs to be taken with a grain (or bag) of salt. Spyware is the threat flavor of the day, and the specialized programs (ad-aware/spybot/spy sweeper/etc.) are better at managing it than traditional A/V is (at least right now). Bots are scary. Need to reformat and reinstall (our instructions to students at this major university). Viruses you can just clean (mostly, but mytob is throwing a wrench into that clean division). You figure which is scarier.
CA is the only product which detects ALL three of the mentioned viruses as of this posting. Which is not to say that they're making this up, but I'd be more willing to believe it if it came from the Secret Service or CERT.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>>is there any hope that all the bad things that are happening with Windows (and Microsoft), that they will change their ways and actually anticipate some of these problems that are occurring?
As great and infallible as non-Windows OSs are, these same problems exist with Linux, Mac et al, just on a much smaller scale. Having some 95% of all desktops, Windows is the natural target here.
The problem isn't Windows or Microsoft. The problem is the **users**. They open email attachments without questioning the source. They don't run anti-virus software (or don't maintain the subscription). They don't employ firewalls. They don't update and patch their systems. They don't scan their systems for adware.
Yes, IE allows adware to be installed. Yes, Windows has the RPC hole. Yes, the windows kernel is, has been, and most likely will always be, insecure. But there are steps that a user can take to protect themselves. I have used Windows since Win286 and I have never been infected with a virus, never been compromised by a worm and never been the victim of spyware. I'm not an anti-MS person but I don't blindly use their software. I have more *nix servers than Windows servers but you could hardly consider me a fanatic.
True, I'm an IT professional and have a greater knowledge of PCs than 99% of users out there (just like the rest of us here), but it's not rocket science to keep yourself protected.
If the Penguin Dream of taking over the desktop ever comes true, you can bet that viruses, trojans, adware, etc will become an epidemic on Linux just as it is on Windows.
Remember: dumb users are platform-independent.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".