Slashdot Mirror
Windows Infected in 12 Minutes
Uber-Review writes "The speed with which PC's can become infected has now shortened. If your Windows computer is not properly protected,it will take 12 minutes before it becomes infected, according to London-based security company, Sophos. They have detected 7,944 new viruses in the first half of 2005, a 59% increase over the same time span last year."
And Slashdot can apparently be infected with a dupe in as little as 5 days!!!!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
Not to mention the original article was a lot better, and not a link to yet another news aggregrator that in turn links to another site: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050704.gtvirusjul4/BNStory/Technology/
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Honestly, who cares anymore? We've all seen this exact same story with some slightly different words or numbers in about 100 different places. Use a firewall or don't use windows, I get it. Let's get on with our lives plz.
No, this time it was another windows machine that was infected in 12 minutes. Expect to see 200 million similar stories in the next week or so.
I'm waiting for a dupe in 12 minutes, now that would be good! :D
So there are variants and minor changes... do we really count these as new viruses?
ogg
Black cat, searing pain, flames...? I must be in Heaven! - Homer Simpson
The Internet Storm Center is tracking a similar number for while. See the "survival time". It has actually improved over the last few months!
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
"Windows infected in 12 minutes."
Hey. I saw this episode on Star Trek. The same thing kept happening over and over again until Data finally kept the ship from blowing up. /. Now we need to repeat all of our original posts, while sending a message with tachyon beams back to our original selves...
That's what's happening on
Blog's Up!
12 minutes hey. Gee I thought IE opened up quicker than that.
For years I have run Windows straight out of the box (no firewall, no security software, nothing), and I've only ran into two viruses -- one through Kazaa, and one through IRC (both my fault).
I can understand that Windows is vulnerable -- but if I've managed to run Windows for many years without any major problems, then I'm curious what they are doing during these 12 minutes to arrive to such a conclusion.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
London-based? They're based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England. Does English now automatically mean London-based or what?
+Pete
Score:-1, Funny
I'm tired of talking about tech fixes to Slashdot's dup plague. It would stop if the editors would just read the damn front page.
--
make install -not war
But the funniest thing about the link is the one and only comment on there that says "Crappy article, but this girl will warm you up inside" and then gives a link to something that would probably lead you to the very exploit it is talking about.
Do the editors of Slashdot actually read the site regularly? If not, should they be posting articles to the front page?
Followup question: Isn't this common sense?
My Windows blue screens in nine minutes, so I'm safe.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the Internet is only as good as the slowest Windows members. Excessive going online, as we know, gets Windows machines pwn3d. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest Windows machines first. In this way, continuously going online eliminates the weaker Windows machines, making the Internet a faster and more efficient place.
Shameless parody of the 'beer is good for you' joke
Free XBox, PS2
At least it's stable. It's exactly the same amount of time as the last time slashdot mentioned this.
Here's a solution.
*dodges flying tomatos*
OK, OK, here's a patch.
*runs*
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
pot. kettle. black.
You can get robbed in a little as three minutes in Downtown Detroit if you walk around counting large stacks of cash.
The internet is not a nice place. Evolve or die.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
When MS_Blaster was at its peak I had computers that were infected before the install finished if I left it connected to the internet.
I seem to recall some cases of software firewalls (if this is what you meant) which don't initiate before the NIC driver comes online, meaning the PC has a few seconds where it can acquire an IP and receive packets before protection commences.
Good design practice should prevent this but it'll never be quite as good as a hardware f/wall. Decent FW devices can be found for very cheap prices now.
If you really can't run a hardware firewall due to a need for many open incoming posrt, the 2nd-best solution is to use a modem with routing ability and direct ports 445, 593 and 135-139 to a dead address (remember to send them to an address outside the router's DHCP range so that address can never be assigned to an unprotected machine). These ports represent Windows file/print sharing, RPC Endpoint mapper (a major exploit target) and RPC comms ports. Killing those 5 ports stops 80-90% of remote attacks, although if you are running a web server, but not actually serving remote users, block ports 80 and 8080 as well to kill frontpage server extensions overflow attacks.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
There's no way linux can beat windows speed record now!
This would be cool if the hunting actually culled the herd but it does not. The infested members of the herd continue ramble on like... zombies. In so doing they are able to impact the rest of the herd and slow it down rather than speed it up.
An Ebola type strain of computer virus might actually be a public good. It would kill off these flu ridden beasts, put them out of their misery and prevent them from continuing to harm the rest of the herd.
Ra's al Ghul anyone?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If you're running a router then just enable NAT and bingo - a simple firewall. I always deploy ethernet ADSL modems now for many reasons - but this is the main advantage.
...)
1. Go to new site
2. Plug PC into modem
3. Configure modem
4. Plug phone line into modem
5. Download latest windows patches
Note that at stage 5 the PC is already protected by a firewall. Just need to AV and patches to protect against email, adware etc.
But then I also configure Thunderbird - which limits the email viruses as well (the number of times I've been called becuase a user can't open an email containing a virus
By "Windows" they mean Windows XP pre-service pack 1 which was released in 2001.
So, what they're saying is: "if your unpatched 4 year old operating system is connected to the internet, it'll get infected pretty quickly."
Granted, pre-sp2 versions of XP has security that wasn't exactly the greatest and, granted, post-sp2 it still isn't perfect (and I'm not defending that) - but the above statement is like saying "if your vanilla install of Redhat 7.2 is connected to the internet, it'll get infected in a couple of hours".
The latter isn't fair to Redhat and so I don't see why it's particulary fair to Microsoft either.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
But what I want to know is how do these machines get infected???
It is certainly easy to get infected while using e-mail or surfing. But now that SP2 comes with a firewall turned on by default, shouldn't it now be impossible to infect a SP2 machine without some sort of user intervention?
Does the SP2 firewall have some holes pre-poked in it already? Are there flaws in the firewall?
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
This is as wonderfull as the Zombie Dog story last week. No facts, no information about the PC, connection, patch history, viruses, etc. Just some random number and some advertising.
Big suprise, the world most popular OS has the largest number of virus's written for it. Another big suprise, leave your machine unpatched and unprotected on a network and it'll get infected.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
>>The first rule of PATRIOT act is do not talk about PATRIOT act
>Has it occurred to you that your sig is lying? There's no provision in the PATRIOT act that says you can't talk about it. You're just adding to the incoherent ramblings of the Left, which nobody listens to. There are plenty of real problems with the PATRIOT act, but your sig does nothing to address them. It's actually hurting by further making its opposition look like idiots.
Oh wise AC, verily, my slashdot sig is not doing enough to change society's problems. For that, I apologize profusely.
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