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DVD Porn Viruses Ravage US Soldiers' Computers
stevegee58 writes "Tom Ricks' Inbox in the Sunday Washington Post reported that bootleg DVDs purchased in Iraqi markets ('souks') are frequently infected with viruses. Iraqi soldiers were affected as well; electronic interaction between Iraqi and US soldiers frequently resulted in a corresponding exchange of viruses from these infected DVDs."
Gets a whole new meaning now.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Are these the old Sony disks they're talking about?
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
From personal experience, believe me, Iraqi porn isn't worth it.
That doesn't sound like supporting the troops.
Trust me, you can buy a new computer but you can't buy a new "unit."
We need to send them virus free porn. Gentlemen time to dump your hard drives to DVD.
The shift key: the condom of the Windows world.
Dude, your porn gave my computer an STD!
Hardware: Don't allow DVD drives.
Software 1: Ummm, Anti-virus software? Hello?
Software 2: Run a VM when accessing DVDs.
Best: Run a Linux distro.
Ok, I'm sure that these aren't necessarily the best solutions (except the last one) but it's something.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
"Iraqi soldiers are affected as well."
Wow, a porn virus that can make the jump from DVD to human?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
When I was in Thailand in 1974, htere were only three places to get cassettes: The Base Exchange (other brances called it the Post Exchange), there there were practically no tapes I wanted to hear, but there were blanks; a government-provided tape center with a library of high quality reel to reels with a good selection that you could copy to cassette; or the local market, where you could get poor-quality copies of damned ner anything.
Tha bad part about the bootlegs from town was the fact that they were analog - the quality left much to be desired. Some had skips that came from the LPs they were recorded from.
The good part about the bootlegs from town was the fact that they were analog - you weren't going to infect your cassette player with XCP or some other virus.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Because as we all know Internet is for porn.
With all of the other stuff they pile on recruits during boot wouldn't it be possible to teach them to practice safe hex?
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
If it is too good to be true, then it probably is. If this becomes a real problem over there for our troops you can bet that the military is going to start cracking down on the troops for copyright infringement or something like that to persuade them to not buy these bootlegs and risk the military's networks.
This must have been what they had in mind when the movie studios insisted on strict region coding on DVD's, they had our best interest in mind all along.
to distribute porn DVDs among the soldiers along with their other assorted rations?
I know that the moralists in americanisthan/jesusland will cry murder, but it seems like a better deal than having infected Computer systems.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
I smell bullshit. How would they be getting viruses just by inserting a DVD? Were they running the executable? And what does it mean by "my memory stick would be filthy with viruses every time I had to go and get documents from my counterpart or his section NCOs."
This seems to be one almighty bad joke. I mean, watching porn... memory "stick" filthy with viruses?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This sounds like a fairly big national security issue to me...
Now, I do realize that these computers operate on separate networks, but traveling disks that are frequently infected presents an issue. Or, put another way, a tempting target for foreign intelligence.
And before you jump to the 'impossible' conclusion, consider this: What are those Iraqi officers trading with our soldiers by thumb drive? Is it ALL unsec material? NONE of it is of ANY operational importance? Really? Really, really?
That strains disbelief...
And consider this: If the portable drives were intentionally infected by a custom virus designed by, oh say, a super power, would the sec networks have a chance to detect it?
My network would not. I'm certain of that. And I'm also fairly certain that I have far less BillyWare than they do in their deployment.
I was stationed in Kuwait in '06-07. We were warned about buying DVDs in Iraq (I would cross the border a couple of times a month) because of viruses. The one specific story i was told was the compromised PCs became part of a botnet which attacked various Israeli internet sites and Playboy.com. I dont know why the skinnies had a mad-on for Hef, i guess they just hate our freedom ;).
..and you won't get infected. This has been a health and safety message from your friendly neighborhood anarchist.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Queue the camel jokes in 3...2...1..
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Autorun
Ok, three more words: Iraqiporn.avi.exe
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have spent a good deal of time at these markets, and I can testify that I saw no porn. Ever. I never saw porn, alcohol, or drugs at these markets. Maybe these porn DVDs were passed around sub rosa or something.
:)
Here is what you CAN find in the markets (even on base): Fake cigarettes, fake cigars, fake Rolexes, fake Nikes, fake anything. Imitation Apple products- headphones, iPod cases, even fake iPods. No fake zunes, though...
In an area about the size of a high school gymnasium, about 80% of the space was filled with bootleg DVDs and software. I don't mean bootleg like the MPAA wants you think bootleg; I mean actual printed DVDs out of japan or taiwan. Some were really crappy theater-cams but many were very good copies of promos and the like. I watch 300, letters from Iwo Jima, Black Snake Moan, and many others before or very shortly after theater release. It was awesome
I also got all ten (at the time) seasons of south park on 4 DVDs for $25. Sweet.
So, here we have this article that, while it may be true, seems to completely miss the point. It's like saying that, "Magazines such as hustler are causing massive deforestation and are filling our landfills." It is just trying to sensationalize the situation. Which is weird, since there are so many other, BIGGER things out there to write about. Try this, RIAA: The base media server, loaded with ~180 GB of music, is free to anyone who wants to download from it. You can get 180 GB hdds at the BX. Oh and there is the movie server, loaded with hundreds of titles. All free for the taking. And this author chose to write about porn? Whatever. Iraq is the wild, wild middle east. Everything goes.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Getting the people of Iraq and Afghanistan watching soap operas or porn is valuable in winding down the religious conservatism in these countries.
"You don't win a war by jacking off for your country. You win a war by making the other bastard jack off for ~his~ country!"
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I thought supporting piracy was supporting terrorism, so if U.S. troops are buying pirate dvd's (in Iraq of all places) doen't that mean U.S. troops are supporting terrorism??
The weekend has landed. All that exists now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. I've got 48 hours off from the world, man
Having been to Iraq before, I can say with 100% certainty that porn is supposed to be off limits to soldiers. That being the case, where are they purchasing these DVDs from? Are they stopping convoys to buy them from Iraqi markets, or are they seriously not watching what the Iraqis are selling on U.S. bases anymore?
Thank you for your service. The trolls here don't seem to understand that they probably wouldn't have the freedom to post offensive jokes were it not for you and your ilk.
I'd also add that the average literacy rate in the armed forces is higher than the national average.
It isn't an executable...just a bunch of vob files really isn't it? How does one get a virus by playing a simple DVD?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I was at the Iraqi Bazaar on the base I am stationed at yesterday. There is NO hardcore pornography there.
They have tons and tons of movies though. Complete with cover art. The movies are obviously pirated as they are all on blank DVD-R discs.
This is the first I have heard of any virus being related to what they have at the bazaar. I'm sure if there was something we'd be getting a briefing on it. Just like we get briefings to watch out for sharp turns on the sidewalks...
I guess this is called a Virtual STD Outbreak?
No thanks, I don't have a virus scanner.
What is this world coming to when even 7-digiters are able to mod?!
So... an STDVD.
of how prohibition of anything is doomed to fail:-{ and how the consequences are worse than the disease...
So the R&D chief goes on a rant (to me, in private): "We've tried sending PCs into deployment, and they come back filthy with 'family videos' and viruses. We try sealing up and enclosing the USB/FW ports and DVD slots, and they come back pried open. No computers."
Customer (to me, during requirements review): "The soldiers get issued WinXP notebooks anyhow. Utilize them."
So I was handed the task of managing the resolution to this showdown. My first thought was, "Porn is not my problem." Second thought, "Hell, give them some clean porn ferchrissakes." Third thought, "oh crap -- we can't certify our product if it is a) in the decision making loop for a certain class of UAV, and b) can run any old crapware, including family videos."
So it's not just a porn problem, but a problem with the inadequacy of the Windows OS itself. I know that this is potential flamebait moderation material, but it's a major thorn in our side: it's not a realtime OS, and even the embedded version of XP isn' real time. And it's susceptibility to viruses and hackers really makes it unsuitable for much more than family photos, letters to Jane, and facebook.
Solution: Give them what they want, on their dime, while spending R&D money to prototype what they need. (Sorry - can't describe it.) Then when the inadequacies become painfully apparent, offer them the alternative, ready for development testing.
I can see the fnords!
just ban windoze;-)
They're actually getting it FROM AN IRAQUI FRIEND who bought the DVDs, and then they became in contact with this FRIEND? this is what we're saying?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
This is military equipment, which might very well contain confidential information.
In a correct situation the soldiers shouldn't be allowed to modify their computers altogether. There's a reason they get a computer in the field (otherwise they don't need to get one).
Another option (more secure): do not put windows on those boxes and do not allow modification of the computer. Modification should be done by people authorized to do so, this will help prevent security breaches.
The U.S. military should impose harsh penalties on unauthorized modification of computers which deal with information of tactical and/or strategical importance (direct or indirect). Situations like this can have dire consequences.
If you want to meet a person who abhors war, talk to a soldier. If you want to judge someone for wanting to "kill people after the Cold War finished" I suggest you look at the people who decide when and where to send the military. I'll give you a hint, they don't wear uniforms.
That is so naive, on so many fronts.
The people who want war are those who profit from it, either directly in dollars, or indirectly from the political power that comes from agitation of the dumb voting public, or more simply, from leading the war machine. And yes, many of those people wore uniforms at one time, or have deep and long-standing links with the military so that they might as well be wearing uniforms.
What you say does have some truth when taken literally, but you can't shrug off the responsibility for your government's warmongering that easily. Soldiers are the facilitators of the problem, and unless your upper ranks perform a direct veto on government excesses, then you cannot avoid the taint that comes from your actions. The excesses would not happen if you did not perform them.
It's so easy to pass the buck, but that doesn't make it right. Nor is it correct to pass the buck, because much of the push for military action comes from the military leaders, always happy to support action that will inflate their budgets and raise their profile.
While your grunts-eye view isn't a lie, it's highly myopic, and very very naive.
Our men and women in uniform deserve virus free porn! American porn producers should flood Iraq with free porn DVDs so the bootleg market dies out.
Until that happens, what brain dead fuckup uses a computer or flash disk likely to have a virus to transfer data to military computers? The kind that like to get their buddies killed? The kind with a death wish? Or just fucking morons?
Nice!
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Pr0n is multimedia... audio and video.
There is no reason at all for such things to carry viruses.
AVI files people. If your porno video is in wmv for exe format throw it out.
If your pictures contain executable code you are doing it wrong.
I have been playing these DVDs in my laptop since I got here with no problems. I have not heard of anyone getting a virus from the DVDs here. I have bought a couple crappy cam movies but most are really very good quality and have caused no prblems. TFA also talked about sharing flash drives with IA soldiers. I would guess that is where the problem lies. I would also be very cautious with the wireless internet that is for sale by the locals, it is not very secure. There have been some minor problems there. BTW here is Northern Iraq.
It seems this thread will be a bitch to meta-moderate.
Hmmmm... I remember when my ex-husband was in the military, it was illegal to sell porn on base. Is this still the case? They could, oh, I dunno MAKE IT LEGAL and start treating these guys like the adults they are SUPPOSED to be.
You'd just clear it up with penicillin. Which makes me think, perhaps the Linux community has been going about advocacy the wrong way. Perhaps something like: "Linux: The Penicillin for Computers" would get the word out, especially given SE Linux.
am i the only one who is a bit sickened by a bunch of bums who sit on cozy chairs reading slashdot criticizing troops on the front line? yes perhaps i am such a bum myself, but regardless of what you think of the iraq war, soldiers do not sit around all day masturbating. get real.
and more importantly, to echo another post above, i too have been to these "souks" in the middle east. you can't find porn there - this should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about Islamic restrictions, regardless of their travel experiences.
So can someone explain to me why US soldiers are buying illegal material (bootleg DVDs) and installing it on military equipment? I would think either one of these is worthy of a severe reprimand.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Sorry, you are wrong. Re-read the Bible and spend time thinking about it.
There are guns designed to punch paper. There are guns designed for hunting - killing animals.
And then you get into the Christian policeman thing. Is it immoral for a Christian to be a policeman? Should he kill to stop a murder? Yes - It would be immoral for him NOT to.
A soldier is much like a policeman. His purpose is to fight to end a war. (Not all soldiers fight with weapons - some are medics, etc. But all fight to bring an end to the war.)
BTW, many people's confusion about Christian theology on this point comes from a poor translation of the 10 commandments. It's NOT, "Thou shalt not kill." It IS, "Thou Shalt Not Murder." (If you disagree, read ahead in the book - commands expressing society's duties to execute muderers.)
I nearly fell foul of something similar a year or so ago. I bought a copy of Gareth Marenghi's Darkplace from Amazon, and on inserting it into my Win2k3 box the machine bluescreened - twice in a row.
Turns out that they were trying to apply a dodgy copy-protection driver onto the machine, which apparently wasn't 100% compatible with 2k3.
Of course, soon as I noticed that I disabled autorun (which is something I'd just forgotten to do since the last rebuild) and ripped the content.
Again, intrusive copy-protection measures make honest users into copyright infringers.
F_T
A lost cause, I suppose, but it seems to me that the root cause of this is a series of insanely bad decisions made by the industry as a whole and by Microsoft in particular, in blurring the line between data and programs in viewable media.
.jpg or a DVD as passively viewed content.
There is no good reason why an email program should willy-nilly try to execute any attachment it sees, and no good reason why a computer should execute stuff on a DVD.
99.99% of the time, the end-user thinks of a
An unholy alliance between technical sweetness (oooh, generality), possibilities for commercial exploitation (this DVD could display ads with a "buy" button on them), and DRM, has created a terrible situation.
The mischief comes in when there are so many parties that have an interest in creating media that are not what they appear to be to the end-user.
When the end-user thinks he's just watching something, the system should enforce the will of the user... not the will of the media provider. If the media does what the vendor wants and not what the user wants, that's a bad capability in itself--but it also is a gaping whole for malware which can subvert that capability to purposes neither user nor vendor want.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Then why do soliders overwhelmingly vote Republican in spite of the fact that that's the party that keeps flinging them into danger and cutting their benefits for when they get home?
There may well be other factors needed to cause war. But soldiers are a pre-requisite. "Soldiers will be 'created' if none exist..." Ignoring the movies, how? Conscription? Unwilling conscripts make lousy soldiers, which is why it's so out of favour with most "advanced" militaries these days. Anyway, there does seem to be a ready supply of volunteer "professional soldiers" willing to fight these wars, despite what the OP said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_media
"The history of digital starts with the development of the number 0 (see 0 (number)) by the Babylonians about 2000BC."
Digital, as in digits. A piece of paper can be "digital media".
Not everyone that logs into slashdot is a pencil-necked dork, and quite a few of us are above average in terms of looks and charm.
So why don't you just learn to take a fucking joke, mr smart navy man, and refrain from committing the very same offense which you decry? Because if there's one kind of people I wish would be skinned alive and dropped in the middle of the ocean, it's hypocrites like you.
You can't take the sky from me...
There is a very simple solution to this: Make pron available to any soldier that wants it. It would be very cheap and easy for the government to make copies of porn dvds for the soldiers. It's better for them to be getting porn that is secure, than bootlegged porn that is full of viruses.
We could have known that porn would be a key weapon in cyber warfare ;)
Privacy is terrorism.
One opinion on the place of porn in Islam - it doesn't have one.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
A fine point which has been overused in the past to justify a lot of bad stuff. It only takes your local fanatic point out that killing the other people not belonging to your religion is not technically murder, it is saving their soul. Or whatever other crap like their supposed crime against christiandom, or torturing them until they avow their crime, then burn them (after mercifully strangulating them in the majority of the case, but not always) even torturing and burning kids as low as 5 year old or 9 year old (read Mckay extroaordinary popular delusion and madness of crowd, witch mania chapter, and the reference therein).
By now, I think this was intentionally written as "you shalt not murder" in the old testament, because the writter was clever enough that "you shalt not kill" would severly reduce the power of the local religion, then the christian church took it over, and indeed probably took the same reasonment, seein how they sometiems directly killed people which was not agreeing with them.
So technically you are correct.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's funny to see so much discussion of the logistics of it and whether or not you'd find porn at a souk.
Reading the comments in the article it sounds like very little technical knowledge and a lot of speculation was involved in the description of the problem. "RAM rot?" I think it's more likely that whatever viruses they have were aquired through typical internet surfing and trading files via flashdrives and networks. I mean, it's possible to put a virus on a helper app on a DVD, and stick an autorun script on it, but I'm betting the source is completely speculative and anecdotal.
Coming to a regiment near you, Officially SANCTIONED 100% ALL AMERICAN PORN FOR RED BLOODED AMERICAN SOLDIERS! Free from Viruses, for both sexes but you can't ask for the gay stuff because we are not allowed to know about that!
So our Men In Uniform are buying bootleg DVD's?
I think that itself is more newsworthy than the virus bits.
What I'd like to know is how the US Soldier's computers are even getting the bad dvd's in the first place...
I would not have thought it possible to spread a virus like this. Sure you could put the virus on the dvd, but when will it get executed? Wouldn't you have to exploit vulnerabilities unique to each dvd decoder?
I think you miss my point, which is precisely that games and video should not be delivered in the same format.
The fact that they are is the result of ill-considered technical convenience. The two formats could have been separated at no cost or inconvenience to gamers.
There ought to have been a hardware distinction between a digital VIDEO disc, containing what the viewer believes to be and intends to use as passively viewable content, and a digital VERSATILE disc, which holds arbitrary data... interactive, executable, computer files, whatever.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What exactly is this "porno-virus"? Besides Tom Rick's Inbox article, I've found no other mention of infected Iraqi bootleg pornos. This does not mean Mr. Rick is wrong, but his article contains little information. All it says is that some bootleg DVDs in Iraq carry unspecified virus(es). Hopefully, his article is based on more than the included excerpt from Capt. Michael Noonan, which made less sense each time I read it. I am not attempting to criticize CmdrTaco or his post. I am questioning the lack of information in Tom Rick's article.
It's nice to see we're bringing something western into these Iraqi soldiers' short boring lives. But I wonder if it was the original intent of the attacker. I wonder if the attacker wanted to inflict pain upon the Americans and the Iraqi soldiers were a welcome bonus. Good ploy though. If you can't attack your enemey directly, hit him in the heart.
"To claim that without soldiers there would be no war is just silly." Why is that silly? Wars are large scale conflicts fought by soldiers, hence without soldiers the cannot be war. There can be plenty violence and generally nasty things, but categorically not war. "Unless you classify a "soldier" any person who decides to take up arms against his neighbor." If lots of them do in any organised fashion, of course they are soldiers. What else? Nuns??
I'm curious about something: where IS the MPAA in this story?
I mean, all we ever hear from them is bootlegging = "terrorism". How come they're not lining up soldier subpoenas and lawsuits for such "Un-American" activity?
Oh, wait. It's the guns, isn't it?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
It doesn't work unless you run an OS that tries to execute everything in sight with admin privileges. I have no idea why anyone would use such an OS, but it seems to be wildly popular nonetheless.
The purpose of the military is to have and use weapons. These weapons get used specifically on other people. This is what army's do, it's what they are for. So, if you claim that soldiers abhor war, then WHY THE FUCK DID THEY BECOME SOLDIERS IN THE FIRST PLACE! If they abhor it so much, why the HELL did they VOLUNTEER to do it?
Because history teaches us that pacifism invites attack. Pacifists can only survive in isolation or when protected by non-pacifists. Soldiers perform a necessary function as deterrents. If deterrence fails, often a result of a perceived weakness - sometimes a military unwilling or unable to fight effectively, then it functions in defense to mitigate damage or perhaps retaliate. Either of which can alter the perception of being weak and affect future deterrence. In short, one of the most effective ways of avoiding attack is to appear to be more than capable of repelling it. Humans are predators and predators look for weak prey.
Folks,
It appears clear to me what we must do. I believe it would be difficult to find a group of people with a larger aggregate porn collection, or larger distributed array of DVD burners, than we who read slashdot. So let's get busy archiving our porn onto DVDs and send them such a vast quantity of smut, no poor GI will have to resort to the virus-infected local stuff over there.
Remember, you don't necessarily need to be an American partiot, you just need to be kinda pervy.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
or turning off autorun on the machines when inserting the disk?
I'm a network/client admin in Afghanistan. Personally, I turn off autoplay (gpedit.msc) on all government and personal machines connecting to our network here. It's pretty easy and saves a lot of headaches. People pass around infected thumb drives so much here, containing it was a problem until we did this.
I also wish Norton knew how to get rid of malware that sets up a service in Windows. Every time a computer gets infected with one of those, I have to manually remove it.
Troops don't need better combat vehicles, what they need is safe, high quality porn. Buy a red ribbon.
Sorry guys. This story is complete bull shit.
They're not. They're using their own personal computers. Where this unfounded assumption comes from that they're issued computers or that military hardware is being used for personal purposes, I do not know.
IED = Infected Erection Disc
ss