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Britney is #1 Virus Celebrity
No France writes "The two ways for an email virus to spread is to use an exploit, or entice the user to click the link/executable. Of course the latter is the easiest, and is the most effective when used in conjunction with a celebrity's name.
Despite the recent Jackson suicide emails, Britney Spears is the one to recently edge out Bill Gates as the top virus celebrity. The top 10 (in descending order): Britney Spears, Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Osama Bin Laden, Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, Anna Kournikova, Paris Hilton, and Pamela Anderson."
'nuff said.
Isn't it ironic that to trick a user into clicking a fake email, they use the fakest of all celebrities?
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
That's because Brittany is Toxic
If they just showed everyone a nude shot of her at school/work so everyone could get it out of their system, most of this problem would go away.
Please post a link where we can read these emails.
I don't understand how anyone can get e-mail viruses easily. i never get any e-mail viruses, but when I do, it's either too obvious and I delete them. how do you guys get e-mail viruses then?
Well, if I have to choose between "see Britney Spears naked" and "see Bill Gates" naked, I'll pick the first worm any day!
see a Text Widget
These kinds of stories, while making the majority among us cringe at the stupidity of the user that falls for this, underlies an important point.
THIS IS WHAT YOUR IT DEPARTMENT HAS TO DEAL WITH!
Millions of man hours and hundreds of millions of dollars go down the tubes to user ignorance. As these costs spiral, the IT sector diminishes. At some point, we will have to stop the patchwork of protecting the users from themselves and engage in the proactive education from these people so they don't hurt themselves and cost their companies, ISPs, and our economy in lost man hours and dollars. How to do this merits exploration, as for every new procedure we establish to protect the user, the user seems to find a way to break it somehow.
The Crimson Dragon
As long as there is 'celebrity' mania, we will have issues like this. Off late, there has been a upsurge in 'celebrity' endorsed marketing, promotions, etc.
As long as people buy these gimmicks, we will continue to see issues like this.
oops i did it again
I don't understand how anyone can get e-mail viruses easily. i never get any e-mail viruses, but when I do, it's either too obvious and I delete them. how do you guys get e-mail viruses then?
It's easy. Most people aren't paranoid skeptical cynics that have to de-worm and cleanse these machines after they have become infected like we are. Most are more along the lines of "OMG this is so COOL!" or "OMG Free Pr0N!".
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Hot_britney_sex_video.exe for free?? And all I have to do is click yes? Awesome!
I thought Pamela would be the #1 virus celebrity ;)...
Pay girls to strip!
So our beloved Mr. Gates, and even Bin Laden, ARE really popular!
Who would have have thunk...8ri7n3y 5p34r5, 8i11 64735, J3nnif3r 70p32, 5h4kir4, 054m4 8in 74d3n, Mich437 J4(k50n, 8i11 (1in70n, 4nn4 K0urnik0\/4, P4ri5 Hi170n, and P4m314 4nd3r50n
I'm filing a class-action suit against Ms Spears. These viruseses have caused untold billions of dollars worth of damage and lost production, and she must be held accountable!
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.
And they have so much in common too -- unleashing anxiety and terror on the computer using people of the world...
that it's not _more_ sex symbols. Is anyone really surprised that sex sells anymore?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Seriously, though I can understand your frustration, I'm really getting sick and tired of blaiming the oh so dumb users.
Computers are everyday tools now. People should simply be able to use them without having to be educated about not clicking a link when receiving an email first.
That clicking a link can seriously foobar your computer is that problem, not that people click a link.
Incidentally, Osama just beats out J-Lo and Gates for the title "biggest ass on the list."
Most viruses are spread by stupid people that open the "Britney Spears Nude" attachment and then it goes through their address book and sends a copy of itself to everyone in it. If you're not receiving such emails, it either means that you have no friends that have added you to their address book or that your friends aren't falling for virused emails.
Me? I have a lot of stupid friends.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Is, of course, ourselves. My experience with phishing and other social-hacks-by-email suggest that the ones that seem to really trip people up are the ones that recipients think are about themselves. I have seen the enemy and he is us.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I've said this many times before, but my idea is to stage virus drills. Every week or so, the IT department should send fake viruses to a random population of the corporate environment. It will have an attachment that will only report to the IT department who opened it. Once a user opens the fake virus attachment, they must watch a 2-hour video on their own time on the subject of "safe email habits".
Pretty soon, they'll be too paranoid to open any attachment.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Although many people wouldn't mind.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
This is a more complex problem. Viruses are much more of a problem now than they were fifteen years ago. The reason is simple: profit. As long as people can earn money by creating zombie computers, asking for ransom for your files or what have you, malicious hackers will find a way.
Think about phising attacks: all you need is a relatively uninformed victim and you have access to their bank account. Celebrity emails just target a different segment of potential victims. The real question to ask is, to what extent do computers need to protect users from their own stupidity? At this point and given the infection numbers, I believe that users are not as much to blame as software companies.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
http://halley.cc/ed/linux/newcomer/filename.html includes a simple graphic to accompany the text.
[
She is a virus, its not that one is named after her.
you know the one... "Toxic"
SYS 64738
*Just kidding, we haven't really found him yet. /. - I know he can't run again
**Cause this is
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=152796&cid
How In God's Name Did It Get Modded REDUNDANT.
'nuff said.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You must have confused this with Fark
Over there they have big pictures that say:
THIS THREAD IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PICTURES
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That made me laugh :) Everytime I help my mom with her computer, I explain you only need to single click anything on a web page. This has been going on for over 5 years and I still have to tell her everytime, and even then she usually forgets by the end of the "session" or whatever. It's so freaking irritating.
Joseph?
How does Bill Gates outrank the women on that list? (Excluding Michael Jackson of course)
-everphilski-
As far as what it is with Brittney, repeat after me: "Lowest Common Denominator." "White Trash Schadenfreude." There's some fascination with the squalid quality there -- poverty of spirit despite all the money and fame. She's like a punctured silicone implant lying on the hood of a rusty pimped Civic. And I do mean "pimped."
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
There's some sense of satisfaction I get in knowing that every time a person ogles, clicks, downloads or otherwise interfaces with that pizza-faced mess known as Brittany Spears, there's a good chance their computer will catch the clap.
:::: the insomniac's digest
Make the offending user listen to 2 Britney Spears CD's.
That would cure me in a hurry ... but would it be considered "cruel & unusual"?
Better check w/ the boys down in Legal first.
"entice the user to click the link/executable. Of course the latter is the easiest, and is the most effective when used in conjunction with a celebrity's name. "
Proving once again that the number one security problem is not Windows, or flaws in Windows -- it is user stupidity.
i always compare it to getting a package from someone you dont know. if you received an anonymous package, would you open it? would you call the cops? or would you let the seagulls at the dump figure it out? its just common sense. if you didnt ask for this, and its not from anyone you know, dont f'in open it. luckily a virus is only going to blow up your computer, not your face.
Just downloaded the Hot_britney_sex_video.exe. Oops... I did it agai
+++ATH
NO CARRIER
Osama bin Laden is a celebrity? ...I guess he is on Al Jazeera
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
No wonder all those "3nl4rg ur m3mbr" emails work.
in that I recognize every one of those individuals. I can even put a face to most of them !
What gamut of innate garbage must my brain contain beyond that...
I'm disgusted by the cesspool that is my mind and, for once, very conscious of the torrents of crap being sluised into it every moment.
And here I am reading slashdot.
I was not aware we were considering Osama Bin Laden a celebrity now. Is he A list or what?
or else!
Agent: "Cheif, we interceped another email from Osama Bin Laden"
Chief: "We got him this time. Open it asap"
Agent: "I don't understand, all it did was change my home page to xxxarabia.com"
Chief: "Damn you Bin Laden!"
Why isn't 'Goatse' on that list?
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
Sneakiest one I ever saw tried to infect my computer by searching through the currently infected computer's sent messages in outlook express looking for ones with attachments. It took the subject line of the original, changed it to "Re: [original subject line]", and set the body of the message to be something along the lines of:
I hope you didn't open that last attachment I sent you. Turns out it was actually infected with a virus. I've attached a cleanup tool that ought to remove the virus for you. I'm really sorry about that!
Fortunately for me, the last attachment he had sent was a jpeg. So I let him know he was infected with a rather clever virus...
But I rather imagine that that virus didn't spread well for all its cleverness. Relying on the contents of someone's sent folder has got to drastically reduce the number of people for the virus to spread to.
We just kill them all.
I heard a story about a predecessor loosing it and pulling a gun on someone. I can relate to that.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone comment on the fact that Britney is also one of the top music viruses! Hasn't anyone noticed that CD's are being sold with her picture on it claiming to have music on it?
Seriously, everyone here saying it's not the users fault is probably one of those moron users. Anyone and everyone should have at least basic reasoning and decision making skills. You expect people to make decisions for them selves in every other aspect of any job, but God forbid they can discren if the free pr0n in there email might be bad for their computer. It's not like it's going to kill them to learn a little something new, it'll be good for them to stimulate their minds a little. Email like any tool works much better if you know how to use it more effectively.
What do you want developers do to fix the "problem" anyway? Make it so you can't send files? While you're at it why don't you ask hammer manufacturers to make it so you can't hit yourself with their hammers?
I applaud your creativity, but that's bad training.
Generally speaking, positive reinforcement (reward for good behavior) works better than punishment for bad behavior. Punishing bad behavior may get results, but it also reduces overall performance for both the individual and the group, by engendering fear of failure.
Negative reinforcement (rewarding good behavior by removing punishment) can work well in the right circumstances. The punishment should have been already earned and deserved, and both the good and bad behavior should be related somehow to the punishment.
Users are demanding the ability to use their email as a file copying and storage mechanism. We as sysadmins can point out that we have a much more efficient means of doing that - this file server over here - but they don't seem to like that. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.
If you really want to do some training:
Done in a spirit of cooperation, rather than confrontation, you should see an immediate sharp reduction in the number of viruses that people open.
sigs, as if you care.
Anybody else surprised? I would have thought Paris Hilton had the most viruses.
Yeah, but you'd hit it anyway, right? Admit it, you dog....
/^Subject: .* \Brittany Spears.*$/ DISCARD
/^Subject: .* \Bill Gates.*$/ REDIRECT eatme@moneywhore.com
In light of these findings, we made need to rethink our 'Phyllis Diller Bares All' strategy.
Why isn't ...
And especially don't read the "Questions from other members"
Tag lost or not installed.
Ok, now I'm offended.
All of the virus celebrities are either women or girly-men (and whatever Michael Jackson is...).
Why aren't there some action hero celebrities?
Where's Arnold? Bruce Willis? Bruce Lee?
("Dear sir, I am the son of the late martial art warrior, Bruce Lee. I need your help...")
Even the buff chicks are not listed. Where's Angelina Jolie? Or Rosie Odonnell? (Either could kick Bill Clinton's butt in a second.)
These viruses seem to only target the shallow majority. We need viruses that infect the little guys! The hard working nobodies who have no life and run Unix! (Porn sucks man. I like emacs!) It's time for a virus that represents the average person, rather than those nip-and-tuck girly-girls.
Because there have been 48,978 unfunny "Cowboy Neal" posts preceding it?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Actually, FDR died in his 4th term as President. There was no limit before the 22nd Amendment. Also, the limit now is 10 years, not 8. It is legal for someone to serve up to 2 years of his predecessor's term (i.e. if Bush were to die in 2006, Cheney could concievably serve as President from 2006 until January 2017.)
Britney Spears, Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Osama Bin Laden, Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, Anna Kournikova, Paris Hilton, and Pamela Anderson.
And this implies that the overwhelming majority of such are openned by men, not women. So men can't joke about women being computer illiterate, eh?
It would be a rather interesting study to determine if men are more likely to infect themselves than women...
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Since when did Osama become a celebrity? Did i miss something?
That site just isn't funny... It's not even satirical. Maybe I don't get it?
Incidentally, I sometimes like to capture a virus and study it on my Linux box, using a hex editor. Without fail, every one I've heard of and every one I've viewed this way has "Microsoft Visual Basic" written in it.
Has *anyone else* ever seen or heard of a virus not written in VB? Is VB used for anything else? Pardon my young age, but did viruses exist before the BASIC language ever came out? Could you make the world's simplest virus-killer just by going:
#!/bin/bash strings $FILE >> inspect grep "Visual Basic" inspect if [ "$?" > "0" ]; then rm -rf $FILE fi rm -rf inspect
?
As far as what it is with Brittney, repeat after me: "Lowest Common Denominator." "White Trash Schadenfreude."
That, and the fact that "Click here for Bill Gates p0rn" doesn't get quite the response the virus writers want.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Anyone else read the title and think STDs or Hepatitis ? I guess that would be Pam Anderson though.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Is anyone really surprised that sex sells anymore?
It doesn't. That why the easy lure for easy prey, notice how most virii files also have the word "free" in them or that its free as implied because its in their inbox!
Since I hate Britney so intensely, I wouldn't click on it.
I thought this article was about the celebrities WITH the most viruses, then I saw Bill Gates and thought 'he can't get around' that much to be getting all of these things.
Isn't that what Thderbird is for???(duhhhh)
GCS/MU d- s: a--- C++ W+++ w+ M-- PS--- PE++ t+ R+ tv b+ DI++ G e- h! !y
When, oh when, will someone fix things so that clicking on an attachment of type .exe does not go and execute it?
That one simple change would reduce the e-mail virus problem by about 90%.
I can't wait for my first virus email proclaiming that I can see her naked!
Ooh, it's so exciting!
Oh, wait, I already have 1,800 pictures of her - and several video clips - including the naked lesbian sex scene in "Gia".
Never mind.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Two years ago I "trained" my wife not to click certain attachments. I implemented this training by leaving her alone in the office with the computer one day, and she happened to acquire a virus. Fortunately, she's reasonably smart and has not done it again.
Now, I have to worry about my 8-year-old son, who has just discovered he can play flash-based Star Wars games on the internet. He also has discovered he can find out about bugs and birds and science through Google. I expect that some day soon he will find out about viruses. (Anyone want to make odds on whether he discovers viruses before or after he discovers pr0n? I'm guessing the pr0n first, and then he'll start clicking on the Britney links.)
Anyway, a question for all of you: How do you train an 8-year-old to be independent on the computer but also be safe about what he clicks? (Yes, we use Firefox.) His six-year-old brother is also catching on fast.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Britney? Whew! That's a Windows virus! Now, if it had been Natalie Portman (petrified and naked) I would have been worried.
sure beats Britney these days in the infamous celebrity scale.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Outlook express should really be called: MS Dirty Needles.
What it needs is some kind of needle exchange to make the whole thing safer.
I used to laugh at webmail...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
redundant != has not been said on this particular slashdot thread before
For instance, if I posted "grass is green" then I'd expect to get modded redundant, because very nearly everybody already knows that and it doesn't need to be said. It's redundant. Just like this is redundant, because anyone on slashdot should know what redundant means.
Because we've heard it all before.
It's not like it's the first "first post" we've ever seen here, y'know. Hell, someone (you?) has been posting the same damn comment every time they've seen the first post moderated redundant.
For example, just because nobody has yet said "in Soviet Russia, somebody set up Natalie Portman the bomb" in *this particular* story doesn't make it new, insightful, informative or original.
Likewise, I've seen pretty nearly exactly the comment you made before made to previous stories. I would moderate it redundant if I had points, simply because it *is* redundant, whether or not it's been posted in this particular story.
In short, mods of "redundant" are wholly appropriate where the same thing has been posted ad nauseum, even when no ocurrance at all of it is found within the current story.
What an upstanding group of celebs. True role models for our children. However, it is very much oriented to North Americans. Surely there must be different names for other parts of the world. For the UK:
1. Prince Harry -- Smoking pot with Neo-Nazis.
2. Blair and Bush -- Written apology to Iraq. Troops To Go.
3. HRH Brenda -- Dysentery cuts Indian tour short.
4. Crazy Frog -- Deported.
5. HRH The Duke of Edinburgh -- Gets slitty eyed at the local pub.
6. etc., etc.
... gets infected it puts a whole new meaning to "ops I did it again".
Although marketshare does affect which target gets targeted the most by viruses and other shitware, it's not the rule. Some OS's are more secure then others out of the box.
I would say the security of any one system is based on more then one factor, mostly being the OS, the shithead between the "chair and key board" and where that OS stands on the market.
There are probably other factors, point is the market alone doesn't determan the exploits of a system.
Britney Spears is the one to recently edge out Bill Gates as the top virus celebrity. The top 10 (in descending order): Britney Spears, Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Osama Bin Laden, Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, Anna Kournikova, Paris Hilton, and Pamela Anderson.
If Britney Spears is #1, and she is first on your list, it's ASCENDING order.
You need work with SQL more. (Or possibly less)
I assure you, having endured that ham-fisted and incredibly obvious song more than I cared to, that my own spontaneous simple reaction was: this person does not "get" irony. The tedious "Not!" thing -- irony for the irony impaired, circa late 1980s -- had a far better idea of what irony is and does.
Your numbered list, incidentally, does absolutely nothing for me. And yes, I understand the points you're making, but I don't agree that they apply.
The song is lame pop, and it missed the mark.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.