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After 7 Years, MyDoom Worm Is Still Spreading
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Sophos have revealed that the MyDoom worm, which spread via email and launched denial-of-service attacks against websites belonging to SCO and Microsoft, is still spreading on the internet after more than seven years in existence. The firm suggests, tongue-in-cheek, that it would be nice if computer users updated their anti-virus software at least once every 5 years to combat the malware threat."
I'll support that.
Right after we require a license to have children.
That would fix alot more stupid thanjust a computer worm problem.
The only thing that comes to mind is 'PEBKAC'.
Look at it another way...
If spammers suddenly discovered that sending out millions upon millions of unsolicited emails generated no revenue whatsoever because nobody ever opened them, then spam would stop overnight as the spammers would have to go and find new ways to make money.
On the basis that spam has not stopped, I think it's safe to assume that there are still lots of people out there interested in buying viagra or bigger willies from some complete stranger on the other side of the world, even though very few (if any) of those knuckle-draggers ever probably ever come here on Slashdot. (Fanbois, zealots and geeks - yes. Pedos, knuckle-draggers and estate agents, no.)
Stated in those terms, do you see now why it is perfectly feasible that there are computers out there with absolutely no virus checking on them that haven't been updated for nigh-on a decade.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Is this really any surprise to anyone? People still believe that Bill Gates is going to pay you for forwarding email. Most attacks (malware, trojans, viruses, etc.) feed on the ignorance of the average person. It's sad really, but I don't expect anything different 27 years later, much less 7.
And if you drive carefully, what do you need safety belts and airbags for?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
XP versions before SP1 would get root'd by simply having internet access.
If I run a VM (XP or something else), that VM must have a different ip-address than the host, and to have internet access, there must be some kind of router or routing system. To reach the VM from the internet, port forwarding must be configured. Maybe the host IP is directly accessible from the outside, but the VM is not. Even if no firewalls are active, there is no way that the VM can be infected simply by starting it up and giving it internet access. So for an infection to occur, you need to start a browser to visit a website that infects the OS of the VM. (And of course the host could be infected, and then spread the virus to the local network, but that's something else.)
So can you explain how this VM will be infected after it started up without doing anything else on the machine?
Btrfs snapshots. Fedora already has support for automatic snapshotting with yum so that you can yum install or yum remove something and, hey, unintended change? Rollback.
Google for cgroups and isolation... there's a more specific term that will get you there immediately, but I can't think of it at the moment, as I've never used it, only read about it. It's basically a better, Linux-only chroot capability.
What the grandparent is trying to say about FTP vs. email is that FTP clients won't automatically execute the viruses they download (unlike Outlook.)