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Wikipedia Used To Spread Virus
eldavojohn writes "The German Wikipedia has recently been used to launch a virus attack. Hackers posted a link to an all alleged fix for a new version of the blaster worm. Instead, it was a link to download malicious software. They then sent e-mails advising people to update their computers and directed them to the Wikipedia article. Since Wikipedia has been gaining more trust & credibility, I can see how this would work in some cases. The page has, of course, been fixed but this is nevertheless a valuable lesson for Wikipedia users."
How better to teach about viruses than to have an actual virus found at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus entry?
Where were you when the voynix came?
There was no danger of the blaster virus. It was simply malicious people claiming you needed to get a new release to protect from the most recent blaster virus. The malicious code they were hosting was not the blaster worm but rather newer virus technology.
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I think I was pretty clear in the summary
People with reasonable sense of life will not trust complete strangers. Any information from complete stranger (on the street, or from the wikipedia, what's the difference?) is just that - a information to consider. Ignore it, or verify if it's true before making some real use of it.
OTOH dumb people will always get what they deserve. They will screw their life by trusting complete strangers and also they will screw their PCs, again - what's the difference?
How come, dumb people can expect to be being protected from complete strangers. And by whom? By other stragers? That article is plain FUD.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Wikipedia, of course, is self-healing. Within two minutes, the virus was replaced with a large picture of a scrotum.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Better not follow this link then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis
The page has, of course, been fixed but this is nevertheless a valuable lesson for Wikipedia users.
According to wikipedia, the number of valuable lessons for Wikipedia users has TRIPLED in the last six months!
Push Button, Receive Bacon
People with reasonable sense of life will not trust complete strangers. ... dumb people will always get what they deserve. They will screw their life by trusting complete strangers and also they will screw their PCs, again
Don't blame the victim, their only fault is to trust Microsoft. Do you know and trust people at Microsoft or are they just another group of "strangers" who screwed your PC with stuff that's easy for malicious people to exploit? I trust another group of "strangers" at Debian but have not been screwed in any of these ways. When and if someone moles their way into Debian, I'm going to blame the mole not myself. Reputation and knowledge are not absolute protection from the malicious. The only thing that's dumb here is that people continue to use and trust Microsoft. Any organization that trusts or works with Microsoft can be screwed this way.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm taking it that you don't admin a firewall, or don't watch the logging? It's still floating around, and I think to myself every couple days "I can't believe it's still around". At this point it's like the background radiation from the big bang, but it's still there. Don't forget there's a lot of places (ala south america) that have machines which are poorly administered, the administrators couldn't tell you if they had blaster or not assuming they even know what it is and will probably have the virus until the physical machine death.