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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
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.
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!
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.
They cant. Did people stop being interested in Paris Hilton, when she :
...
a) Shot that movie
b) Showed her tits in The Simple Life
c) had no panties
That would just cause people to look for more.
If the "stars" dont stop acting like bitches (no offense meant to other sexy-and-classy stars) they will get the same interest bitches get in the street. You know it's not worth it, really, but you do check them out, dontcha ?*squeak*
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? --
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
They cant. Did people stop being interested in Paris Hilton, when she :
a) Shot that movie
b) Showed her tits in The Simple Life
c) had no panties
If you included a link to a virus right after those lines, you would have had me. Pavlov's dogs and bells were nothing compared to guys and links to naked celebrities.
/. ++
http://halley.cc/ed/linux/newcomer/filename.html includes a simple graphic to accompany the text.
[
Simple People.
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://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html
You come in at number 2. Well done.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=152796&cid
How In God's Name Did It Get Modded REDUNDANT.
'nuff said.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
How does Bill Gates outrank the women on that list? (Excluding Michael Jackson of course)
-everphilski-
Why this obsession with Britney (or other celebs) - if she was just someone you knew and you saw here naked you'd look away.
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
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 agree. Cars are everyday tools now. People should simply be able to use them without having to be educated about not flooring the accelerator and driving straight into oncoming traffic at 70mph. That not knowing how to drive a car can seriously foobar your body is a problem, not people that can't drive for shit.
-py
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.
Talk about stupid arguments :-D
Now the original poster wants the people to know more than should be required, which would be equal to wanting people to know not only how to drive a car, but also how the car itself works, which is ridiculous
Nobody is asking that users know how the car itself works. Users don't need to know about SMTP or POP3 or MIME types or anything like that. They do need to know how to use their mail program to receive mail without causing an accident, much like how I need to know how to use my car to get from point A to point B without causing an accident. Knowing how to do things safely IS PART OF THE TASK.
-py
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!"
Similarly, the person who clicks on random email links knows how to use email, just not how to use it safely and effectively. They got their email just fine, they read it just fine, they obviously know how to use it. They just also happened to do something unsafe while using it.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
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.
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?
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.
Yeah, and lots of people also like to click around in the windows start menu, probably because of the small delay which the popups take to appear... But I find it amazing that after doing this so many times they never notice that some of the times, the popup appears before they click... Either they are too distracted with their thoughts to notice, or they just don't think... I think the first is probably the truth.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Anybody else surprised? I would have thought Paris Hilton had the most viruses.
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.
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.
"btirtney spears", no, "britnt spears", arg! "breathney spears", I mean, "bitttany spears"...
On a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is the hardest, I'd say (judging from http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html) that it's pretty hard. :-p
"Live free or don't."
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.)
So... just how many does she have?
Oh wait...
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
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.
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.
I think a big part of the problem is that there is a provence of France called "Brittany."
... "ney" and you will do fine.
"Britney" was a popular-ish baby name for girls in the late 80s and early 90s, but unless you are either in your late teens - early 20s, or have a child at that age, you are probably a lot more used to seeing the spelling of the location, rather than the name.
To make matters worse, that's also about the time that fucked-up alternate spellings of names started to become popular, so among all the "Meggan but spelled with a Y" freaks roaming about, there's a good six or seven spellings of Britney floating around out there, in both two-sylable and three-sylable versions.
Remeber that she's two sylables "Brit"
Better yet, forget it. Forget she even exists.
She hasn't been interesting since she stopped wearing those Catholic school uniforms... and even then she was only interesting in a "hey look Ethel, they're putting jailbait skanks on the TV now" kind of way, which stopped being shocking right about when t.A.T.u had their first MTV hit.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
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?!
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.
Well, the typical computer user is going to want Bonzi Buddy or Weatherbug for their Mac just like they do for Windows. And when the installer asks them for their Admin password, the typical computer user is just going to hand it over. Even if they don't hand it over (say, they don't know it, like in a corporate setting), the installer can still infect their user space. Or try a local exploit to get root access (which they have been few for the Mac).
OSX is certainly more secure against worms and drive-by spyware installs. But social engineering is still going to work. I might even say OSX users might be a little more at risk, as their platform has not really been targetted yet - luring them into a false sense of security.
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.
As a "YES FRANCE" person, I've got to say that this whole thing worries the hell out of me. Now that I think about it, I can't think why. If the idea was to worry "Yes France" people though, your post is really good. Have a really good day anyhow
How many beans make five, anyhow ?