A worm don't need to be run as root, don't even need to be stored on disk (not remember if was the MSSQL one or one of the IIS ones that there was no file on disk with the worm). Just need to run to replicate between hosts, and there was several in the past for linux.
And even with that activity some kind of damage could be done. A mail worm could be used to send spam from "trusted" mail servers. Bandwidth and CPU could be consumed enough to make sites unoperational, and, of course, there is the net effect, if all apaches in the world (or worse, all BIND in the world, that is more used than apache) try to do something similar than the article worldwide bandwidth could suffer.
My point not was that in windows such worm could be very harmful, just that even for linux or other "safe" OSs such worms could do a hit on internet as a whole.
Next internet-stopper worm could be a linux one...
on
Analysis of the Witty Worm
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· Score: 4, Insightful
.. this analisys shows the impact on internet as a whole of a worm that not was a microsoft software, not was very widespread, even was a security/firewall software, and patches/advisory was from just a day before.
Under that conditions, if a similar flaw is found in i.e. iptables, ssh, bind, apache or postfix, it could have a similar impact, be the OS Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX or whatever you consider "safe" and widely enough used.
Of course, if the same would happened to a really popular software out there (clients are more popular than servers, we know the effect of outlook worms, and even by default installed servers, like IIS, or maybe even the Win XP SP2's bundled firewall) the effect would be much worse, but no OS connected to internet is safe against this.
Maybe releasing policies will change putting the "when its ready" release date over the "when the marketing people say" on the light or the widespread of this kind of things.
Unmanned missions are cheaper and less riskier than manned ones, but that have a cost. You can't react fast enough to unespected events. If i.e. a martian walks to some of the martian probes, taps it in the head, and keep walking, still be need some minutes (hours?) till someone here is aware of that and at least try to see from where it went.
For something that already costed a big percent of sending a man out there, you are very limited on what you can do, how can react, or the creativeness you can develop, are not so much more than a telescope powerful enough (well, maybe with more senses).
Of course, maybe a manned mission that costed too much more, and with a lot of risks, and, even that finally ended sucessfully, did not needed that human intervention, don't happened nothing that needed yes or yes our creativity or ability to react to things that were not thinked months or years ago on earth, but... what if that abilities would made a difference?
at least, back when i was using OS/2. When started with Linux, perl seemed very ugly and unintuitive to me (specially when comparing how text is parsed in both languages), but it was so easy to use the output of other programs (compared with REXX even under linux) that I finished to like it and using it for everything instead of REXX.
"Still no one switched" are strong words. All those steps enabled a lot of places to switch (think in Munich, a lot of asian countries, etc) or considering doing so.
Of course, not was a sudden, massive, worldwide switch, changing what more or less works for another thing than may work is not an easy choice, nor that should be taken lightly, but you can see the road being built stone by stone.
3. Counterintuitive. Next thing they will do is to is to stop referrals from directories, google, and personal bookmarks, in fact, from any referers from outside their own domains. If they want this they would be better publishing in another media, NOT in the www where linking is one of the basis.
the part of the serie when they were in Earth they had communicators/arm computers that covered half of the arm. Not remember now the details, but wonder how much they look or like this model.
My mistake, after reading "my new book" looked at the book data in the review, found the reviewer name there and didn't notice that on the side it said "reviewer", not author.
If you have problem with that, better don't try to install debian where the package list should be several times bigger, and that just using the official sources.
In the other hand, SuSE have some default selections or aggroupations of packages, where instead of selecting one by one you get in one category a lot of related programs (i.e. you can select KDE or gnome desktop, or development packages or things like that) selected in group but where you can deselect things from there. That helps dealing with such amount of programs.
Another strategy you can use to install distributions with that order of available programs is install a "default" system (at least for the ones that provides you with that option) and install more programs when you need something you don't installed at the first time.
Slashdot is not the best virus alert source, maybe, but I would not discard so easily being informed by this kind of alerts.
Still remember when I received the first Nimda virus, 40 minutes after the first report. Times could be lower, and still the antivirus company must add the detection/cleaning of this virus to its product, and of course, you dont update signatures every 5 minutes or so. Having any kind of early warning is very useful sometimes.
Also, you must consider that sometimes have secured the doors but not often the internal computers (mail gateways, proxies, etc), where users are very creatives disabling programs, and most virus do the same. A worm/virus/trojan could had come in while the antivirus still don't detect it, disabling the antivirus if there was one, and with luck you can detect that by the collateral damage/effects it have.
I use Anomy Sanitizer for mail gateways. It just put in quarantine and remove from the original mail what have a banned extensions (.pif/.scr/etc), or are detected by an antivirus (but not cleaned, detection is enough for the automatic part), do some cleanings in the text like removing in the html the dangerous tags, and the end user gets the original messages with a warning for each quarantined attachment.
People are still getting a lot of mail because of virus, but they receive the text (not the dangerous part), and I can recover quarantined attachments if was the antivirus had a false positive or a banned extension file was really meant to be sent. Also happened several times that someone sent files from infected machines without being aware of that or joke programs that could make trouble, where i don't want to let pass the file but yes the text.
Think that an entire family is responsible not only for sending out loads of spams, but also for selling addresses. If there is something that justifies inventing a time machine and killing someone's grandfather, well, that would be a great opportunity.
Why not? You dont use the name of a common compression program as a verb (well, not sure in english, but around here in spanish yes)? Or the name of a brand as the name of something (think at least in aspirin).
Using it as a verb is like saying "use this particular search engine" because has become the default/best choice without thinking (with aspirins happened the same at least some time ago), and I would be surprised that that don't happens with more things.
SCO had done enough merits in slashdot to win its own specific (i.e. no caldera, when they had that name not were so deep in the dark side) logo, section, faq entry, exceptions in slash code and even users-optional tagline pack.
Even when they lose their lawsuit (that seems less inminent than when all of this started) and the company is closed, buried and sold even the chairs and the pencils of it, still will be for years news about sco and their directors here (i.e. Darl McBride raped in prison, or even die in poverty, from the remember-when-we-roared dept.).
Anyway, this story is more about Microsoft than about SCO, but well, Microsoft had the merits since the start of Slashdot and if there was nothing done about them yet, maybe never will.
Ok, think in company A and B as not only their main website, but also a bunch of machines from inside with internet connection (NATed, proxied, whatever). Then machines on company A got the latest/greatest virus/trojan that launch an attack to company B, and the same in company B (could work with only one side intervention, but let madness have more opportunity to spread).
This is not completely unrealistic, take two companies that have obviously great minds behind like Microsoft and SCO, and machines in both sides are infected with the MyDoom variant that try to DOS both of them... Anyway, dedicated trojans could do easily the same for any company.
And if this weird idea have the slight idea to widespread, think in a worm that spreads by email, and the host that try to DDOS is the main host/mx/whatever of the server on the infected pc bookmarks. Maybe in a "normal" internet that kind of worm will have not so big effect, but with random machines trying to DOS back the effect will be amplificated
... now, that is a negative or positive thing for windows, microsoft or the world as a whole?
I think a lot of companies that depends on windows would happily buy a lot of boxes of linux and show the bills to Microsoft if that will make windows more safe and stable.
... or at least, not just generic ones. Anything that could be related to searching for information that is already on the web will have some sort of impact. Dictionaries, translators, thesaurus, recipes, reference books, etc are things that have good alternatives (or at least, good enough for normal use) in the web. And the actual trends will make things even worse for them.
But publishers are not passive in front of that. At least several are embracing the web, trying to differenciate their service against the "background noise", and be sucessful in this kind of environment (at least for technical books, still have a big respect for O'Reilly, one can find more useful i.e. their cookbooks than blind google searching for some problems, and that in a field where google should be better)
That is intended to help peace in such regions? Wonder what amount of casualties could start simple phrases like "greetings to your mother". At least if its read in english you know what it tried to say, but if the original meaning is lost with translations that had some non-diplomatic implications, well, the risk is high.
Ok, then explain your boss that should (well, at this time already did, no?) buy corporate licenses of antivirus for those 50000 windows boxes and keep it updated every hour, and even that way, there still a big risk of all get infected by a last hour virus.
Or tell them that exist something called "trojan", that exploit the same vulnerabilities that do the virus, but can be directed, and if well actual antivirus detect most known trojans, anyone (an angry ex-employee? a competitor) could do or modify one that wipes out his network in a day and could run undetected by antivirus.
Numbers seems to be more relative when people is aware of the kind of timebomb is sitting on
Slashdot Mirror
Geography matters a lot for physical contact, and nothing for virtual.
Maybe pear trees? sapient pear trees? If so, looks like a nice place to put a luggage factory.
And even with that activity some kind of damage could be done. A mail worm could be used to send spam from "trusted" mail servers. Bandwidth and CPU could be consumed enough to make sites unoperational, and, of course, there is the net effect, if all apaches in the world (or worse, all BIND in the world, that is more used than apache) try to do something similar than the article worldwide bandwidth could suffer.
My point not was that in windows such worm could be very harmful, just that even for linux or other "safe" OSs such worms could do a hit on internet as a whole.
Under that conditions, if a similar flaw is found in i.e. iptables, ssh, bind, apache or postfix, it could have a similar impact, be the OS Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX or whatever you consider "safe" and widely enough used.
Of course, if the same would happened to a really popular software out there (clients are more popular than servers, we know the effect of outlook worms, and even by default installed servers, like IIS, or maybe even the Win XP SP2's bundled firewall) the effect would be much worse, but no OS connected to internet is safe against this. Maybe releasing policies will change putting the "when its ready" release date over the "when the marketing people say" on the light or the widespread of this kind of things.
For something that already costed a big percent of sending a man out there, you are very limited on what you can do, how can react, or the creativeness you can develop, are not so much more than a telescope powerful enough (well, maybe with more senses).
Of course, maybe a manned mission that costed too much more, and with a lot of risks, and, even that finally ended sucessfully, did not needed that human intervention, don't happened nothing that needed yes or yes our creativity or ability to react to things that were not thinked months or years ago on earth, but... what if that abilities would made a difference?
at least, back when i was using OS/2. When started with Linux, perl seemed very ugly and unintuitive to me (specially when comparing how text is parsed in both languages), but it was so easy to use the output of other programs (compared with REXX even under linux) that I finished to like it and using it for everything instead of REXX.
Of course, not was a sudden, massive, worldwide switch, changing what more or less works for another thing than may work is not an easy choice, nor that should be taken lightly, but you can see the road being built stone by stone.
3. Counterintuitive. Next thing they will do is to is to stop referrals from directories, google, and personal bookmarks, in fact, from any referers from outside their own domains. If they want this they would be better publishing in another media, NOT in the www where linking is one of the basis.
the part of the serie when they were in Earth they had communicators/arm computers that covered half of the arm. Not remember now the details, but wonder how much they look or like this model.
My mistake, after reading "my new book" looked at the book data in the review, found the reviewer name there and didn't notice that on the side it said "reviewer", not author.
It could be an excellent book, and an excellent and very objective review, but, well, by default i would trust more in thirdy party reviews.
In the other hand, SuSE have some default selections or aggroupations of packages, where instead of selecting one by one you get in one category a lot of related programs (i.e. you can select KDE or gnome desktop, or development packages or things like that) selected in group but where you can deselect things from there. That helps dealing with such amount of programs.
Another strategy you can use to install distributions with that order of available programs is install a "default" system (at least for the ones that provides you with that option) and install more programs when you need something you don't installed at the first time.
Don't matter how you want to justify them, is always MS's fault.
Still remember when I received the first Nimda virus, 40 minutes after the first report. Times could be lower, and still the antivirus company must add the detection/cleaning of this virus to its product, and of course, you dont update signatures every 5 minutes or so. Having any kind of early warning is very useful sometimes.
Also, you must consider that sometimes have secured the doors but not often the internal computers (mail gateways, proxies, etc), where users are very creatives disabling programs, and most virus do the same. A worm/virus/trojan could had come in while the antivirus still don't detect it, disabling the antivirus if there was one, and with luck you can detect that by the collateral damage/effects it have.
People are still getting a lot of mail because of virus, but they receive the text (not the dangerous part), and I can recover quarantined attachments if was the antivirus had a false positive or a banned extension file was really meant to be sent. Also happened several times that someone sent files from infected machines without being aware of that or joke programs that could make trouble, where i don't want to let pass the file but yes the text.
Think that an entire family is responsible not only for sending out loads of spams, but also for selling addresses. If there is something that justifies inventing a time machine and killing someone's grandfather, well, that would be a great opportunity.
Using it as a verb is like saying "use this particular search engine" because has become the default/best choice without thinking (with aspirins happened the same at least some time ago), and I would be surprised that that don't happens with more things.
the article seems to be copied to http://www.carorcar.com@www.silicon.com/networks/w ebwatch/0,39024667,39119015,00.htm
SCO had done enough merits in slashdot to win its own specific (i.e. no caldera, when they had that name not were so deep in the dark side) logo, section, faq entry, exceptions in slash code and even users-optional tagline pack.
Even when they lose their lawsuit (that seems less inminent than when all of this started) and the company is closed, buried and sold even the chairs and the pencils of it, still will be for years news about sco and their directors here (i.e. Darl McBride raped in prison, or even die in poverty, from the remember-when-we-roared dept.).
Anyway, this story is more about Microsoft than about SCO, but well, Microsoft had the merits since the start of Slashdot and if there was nothing done about them yet, maybe never will.
This is not completely unrealistic, take two companies that have obviously great minds behind like Microsoft and SCO, and machines in both sides are infected with the MyDoom variant that try to DOS both of them... Anyway, dedicated trojans could do easily the same for any company.
And if this weird idea have the slight idea to widespread, think in a worm that spreads by email, and the host that try to DDOS is the main host/mx/whatever of the server on the infected pc bookmarks. Maybe in a "normal" internet that kind of worm will have not so big effect, but with random machines trying to DOS back the effect will be amplificated
but at the end getting their non-costumers even happier/funnier for not being customers.
I think a lot of companies that depends on windows would happily buy a lot of boxes of linux and show the bills to Microsoft if that will make windows more safe and stable.
But publishers are not passive in front of that. At least several are embracing the web, trying to differenciate their service against the "background noise", and be sucessful in this kind of environment (at least for technical books, still have a big respect for O'Reilly, one can find more useful i.e. their cookbooks than blind google searching for some problems, and that in a field where google should be better)
That is intended to help peace in such regions? Wonder what amount of casualties could start simple phrases like "greetings to your mother". At least if its read in english you know what it tried to say, but if the original meaning is lost with translations that had some non-diplomatic implications, well, the risk is high.
Or tell them that exist something called "trojan", that exploit the same vulnerabilities that do the virus, but can be directed, and if well actual antivirus detect most known trojans, anyone (an angry ex-employee? a competitor) could do or modify one that wipes out his network in a day and could run undetected by antivirus.
Numbers seems to be more relative when people is aware of the kind of timebomb is sitting on