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."

Comments

Nice...

[j0nkatz]

And Slashdot can apparently be infected with a dupe in as little as 5 days!!!!

Re:Nice...

[m4dm4n]

Actually thats a well protected and patched uptodate slashdot. Some slashdots can dupe within hours.

Holy Dupes, Batperson!

[Willeh]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/01/021 8209&tid=172&tid=220&tid=218

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/

Woop-de-freaking-doo.

[MasamuneXGP]

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.

Re:Woop-de-freaking-doo.

[digidave]

I guess one of the problems is that you can be infected before you have a chance to download a firewall. Unless you're on the newest version of Windows you're pretty screwed unless you can configure packet filtering on the NIC.

variants... do they count?

[super_ogg]

So there are variants and minor changes... do we really count these as new viruses?
ogg

Internet Storm Center is tracking "survival time"

[UnderAttack]

The Internet Storm Center is tracking a similar number for while. See the "survival time". It has actually improved over the last few months!

And in a related slashdot story

[mindaktiviti]

"Windows infected in 12 minutes."

Time Loop

[DanielMarkham]

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.
That's what's happening on /. Now we need to repeat all of our original posts, while sending a message with tachyon beams back to our original selves...

Blog's Up!

Re:Time Loop

[Lt Cmdr Tuvok]

You are quite perceptive. Tachyon beams are exactly what I, myself, have been using, and am indeed using right now, to write messages on this very 'chatboard'.

Perhaps we are indeed violating the Prime Directive in the most appalling manner by allowing geeks from your time to view 'Star Trek' unabatedly. Your knowledge of events and technology that occur and exist in our time grows ever greater.

With this in mind, please disregard this comment. It does not exist.

Only 12 minutes

[DS_User]

12 minutes hey. Gee I thought IE opened up quicker than that.

Uh

[sheriff_p]

London-based? They're based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England. Does English now automatically mean London-based or what?

+Pete

Eat Your Own Dog Food

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Editors - Question

[Phishcast]

I read Slashdot regularly, and I at least skim every headline that comes across. I must notice just about every duplicate article with simple skimming. I'm not nearly as annoyed as a lot of folks when I see a dupe, but my question is this:

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?

Blue screen

[digidave]

My Windows blue screens in nine minutes, so I'm safe.

Windows is stable!

[broothal]

At least it's stable. It's exactly the same amount of time as the last time slashdot mentioned this.

Wow, thirty posts about it being a dupe.

[cablepokerface]

pot. kettle. black.

not always enough - hardware firewalls are better

[CdBee]

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.

Re:Internet Storm Center is tracking "survival tim

[jedidiah]

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?

Re:not always enough - hardware firewalls are bett

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ...)

pre sp1

[Mr_Silver]

If your Windows computer is not properly protected,it will take 12 minutes before it becomes infected, according to London-based security company, Sophos.

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.