I just read an article saying that conficker is still alive and well, but the CnC servers are being blocked and/or taken down - essentially rendering the malware mostly harmless with the head cut off.
It's interesting to read about this, I played around with tweet-my-pc a while ago and the amount of control available through the twitter system is interesting. Putting your CnC on a massive and pervasive system that someone else keeps up and pays the bills for (FB or twitter) is brilliant.
However, I heard that twitter was going to start cracking down on accounts being used for such things. Perhaps they just simply can't?
I live in a semi-rural community that has fairly fast internet options (cable, DSL) and even rural surrounding areas have or are getting DSL and cable internet as well. My cable is at 10Mbps. A small local telco is also fiberizing the whole town. I have unlit fiber near my house already.
But I WORK in a community that is simply in the dark ages. There are places in the US, having paved roads and electricity and running water, that are within 15 miles of a small city and maybe 30 miles of a large city, where a significant number of people have some or all of the following conditions:
1) No "high speed" internet from DSL or Cable. Simply non-existant at any speed. 2) No line-of-sight wireless broadband 3) No cell phone reception from any carrier - in a dead zone 4) The phone lines they do have are crap. 5) Satellite internet is avail but often is approaching $90 a month or more for laggy and inconsistent performance 5) Wireless WAN internet over cellular, if not in a dead zone, is often at 1.5 Mbps, the device costs sometimes $100 or more, contracts if required can be $60 per month and require a 2 year commitment for a max transfer of 5 GB per month. (or, Virgin's mobile which claims unlimited but isn't) 6) The only option is dialup - 56k babeee!
I read on here somewhere that globally a 1.5 Mbps "broadband" connection is no longer considered broadband. Believe me, there are some folks who just want anything more than dialup.
It's great that the boys over at Symantec have found out that there are malware toolkits on the interwebs.
Maybe next they will develop a program that will remove viruses and other malware without breaking computers or, as I've seen, forcing customers to call India tech support who charg $90 to remove those extra special tough ones.
Then the next step will be to do that without bringing the computers to a crawl.
lol a cry for help on myspace, all that's heard is cricket chirps as a tumbleweed bounces by.
Wait, not lol, this is a serious tragedy, how politically incorrect to find humor in a thread discussing mass layoffs and shooting sprees?
Oh, wait, I'm the one that brought up the shooting spree. Bummer. I feel so bad now. I'm going to go lay down. Good thing I don't have a myspace account, that would be the last straw.
A million bucks worth of kit, smuggled out in a "small bag?!"
I'm guessing they are using 'cop math'.
My bet : they calculated that the small kit can be reproduced and / or reverse engineered, and the resulting copies will result in an overall loss to the original company over the sales life of the product, equaling one million dollars in losses.
Everyone knows the dead birds are due to HAARP and weather modification but are afraid to say it. Come on people! Break out the tinfoil hats and fire up the conspiracy theory machine.
Just curious, I don't come across too many people who are "that" good and don't have to be diplomatic at least a little.
The question is diplomatic to whom. Many bigshots get a "Don't you know who I am? You're a nobody so when I tell you to jump you jump" attitude. Actually some of the worst think the world consists of kissing ass or being kissed. You very quickly notice what category he thinks you fall into.
From my observation there's more than one kind of diplomacy or political gymnastics when dealing with people... There's the mind numbed robot who has been "trained" to be a patronizing schmuck, kissing tail by reflex, not daring to offend no matter who or what.
Then there's the person who deals with people carefully purely out of manipulation in order to get what they want from who they want.
Eh, I worked for the same company three times (never fired, quit over pay each time), refused to be in the installation or service departments (the owner of the company told me what to do, no one else), laid out often, told the boss "fuck you" several times, walked off of job sites, refused to do certain jobs and told a helper I'd kill him. I refused to wear the company uniforms, I would not carry the pager if I did not want to, and I refused to call in for POs or to justify any part, piece or tool I decided I needed on my service van. If I needed it, I bought it using the company account or CC. Not to mention wrecking a truck and running into the shop (two separate incidents). Thing was I was a valuable employee because I could fix any piece of HVAC/R equipment, estimate jobs in half the time of our estimator, sell upgrades and new jobs, interact with most customers very well, and would run twice as many service calls with the same percentage of call backs as our "best" service tech, and would consistently bill out well over 300k a year. Some folks are actually worth having, no matter how PITA they are. And that, 9 times out of ten, is based on the money.
That's pretty cool that you really knew your stuff, you had high billables, and they obviously tolerated you. But have you tamed down the 'tude over the years, or are you still as much of a jerk? Nothing personal, I don't know you at all, but it seems from your post you actually know that you can be a pain in the ass... It's not like you are unaware of how you "come across" - some ppl are clueless of how they come across, I was in that boat once.
Or was it just that particular employer or that industry that pushed your buttons? LOL.
Just curious, I don't come across too many people who are "that" good and don't have to be diplomatic at least a little.
It's "funny" how there's all this FCC internet regulation, WTF investigation, and renewed vigor with "net neutrality" crap now that wikileaks has dropped the massive turd on the white house front door.
Before it was really just whining about lack of sales tax on internet sales, and spam, but now that the dirty laundry is embarrassing powers that be, they are flexing their muscles and lashing out at "the internet".
His movies might be packs of lies of joke level quality, but they are well done packs of lies of joke level quality.
He tells his lies very convincingly, as if he truly believes them himself. I saw Sicko and the way he portrayed euro socialized medicine put the programs in such good light, it made them look amazing and a must-have. His mistake was not showing even a single solitary piece of information that was negative. He forgot that nothing is perfect and that most people are not total idiots.
The purpose of his movie Sicko, I think, was not a documentary. His purpose of Sicko, just guessing here, was to show that the US health care costs and insurance system are messed up and that there are other ideas. In that regard, it WAS done well....
As a disclaimer I do not like Moore's politics and seriously doubt his patriotism. This stunt with Assange only makes sense because he and Assange are, apparently, birds of a feather.
I guess the main takeaway here is that Michael Moore is ALSO an annoying punk who likes to poke finger in the eye of the establishment and stir things up.
Also Michael Moore is very good at what he does, whether or not you think he is a higher life form than pond scum.
Fitting he should post bail.
Assange should head for a non-extradition country and keep his head down because he will shortly become very "accident prone".
I second this. I also work in the industry and people generally don't know that not only do you have to be outside, but you have to have a clear line of sight to the sky and not be near obstructions like buildings. Also, the higher off the ground you are, or the higher the elevation, the better. Even in the best conditions, the call quality can vary as a satellite goes over the horizon and passes your call to another satellite.
Also, satellite calls are very expensive, and the hand held units, although getting smaller (like the Iridium 9555 handset), are still bigger than a large cell phone.
How..... Handy. Suddenly AT+T doesn't look so bad.
Or, if his life is like how I play GTA3, he has an infinite assortment of guns, ammo, flamethrowers, armor, health, tanks and race cars to simply blow stuff up for hours on end....
Did you just post a malware distribution URL? As a live href?
I hope that was munged, edited, or otherwise neutralized. Otherwise, that was reckless.
Also, as evidenced by your partially-anonymized email header, the spam zombie server seems to be associated with Walgreens. Nice piece of malware intel, there.
Nope, I was reckless and all I blanked out was my guys email address. HOWEVER I'm not totally insane, the urls didn't work for me when I checked - My thought is they had already been dealt with.
A customer of mine got this email. He forwarded it to me, not because he thought it might be a scam, but because he remembered I had put on foxit reader instead.
I explained a little bit about how it wasn't from adobe and wasn't going to an adobe site.
Let me clarify if I may. Where I reside the copper is all owned by AT&T. There are various vendors of DSL but ultimately they are reselling AT&T. The lines are horrid. Routine outages, etc. The vendors are out of luck, the problem is rarely theirs, it is due to the AT&T infrastructure.
I've had cable internet and cell phones (no landline) since 2003 and have loved it.
Given that I am "hooked" on fast cable internet, can't be bothered to pay for a landline phone, and know that the DSL options will have problems... I would likely choose comcast.
And, as I said, I know fiber is coming and I will switch. I know that the cable companies do and/or want to throttle video on demand from netflix et-al because they would rather you watch TV from their main product - TV. Which I don't.
My household will routinely be streaming three different netflix streams at one time. Two different PC's and a Roku box.
Comcast cable internet is rarely the only option for internet in any given community. There is almost always an option to get a DSL product from the phone company. Which means you basically have to have a landline. So you pay somewhere close to the same amount of money for much slower internet.
If I was in a community where it was DSL on AT+T copper or comcast I'd probably go with comcast.
There is fiber optic cable ran within 10 feet of my property. It will someday have phone/tv/internet going over it. At the moment it is dark, but once it is available..... Goodbye cable internet. I don't have comcast I have a "smaller" cable internet supplier, Mediacom. Comcast is all around us though.
Yeah I'd rather have a @gmail.com and actually TELL that to someone than to make a @facebook.com and tell that to someone.
I admit I have a facebook account (along with apparently all the rest of the world) but I don't actually brag about it.
It just isn't professional. Neither is @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com and certainly not @aol.com. @gmail.com is semi-professional yet I do have my own domains which I would put on a business card.
Not only is there already such a virus, the PC usually comes with it preinstalled.
Let me guess... You are referring to Norton 360 or McAfee?
I think windows was what he meant
Awwww... come on, windows pc will usually get on the internet properly at least when first set up, and I've seen norton a/v immediately break the networking on a perfectly working windows pc - more than once.
However, I do see your point windows was probably what he meant.
What is the most powerful explosive that can be shoved into someone's ass or vagina or implanted into breasts?
What is the maximum practical volume of said explosive that could fit into a typical ass, vagina or pair of breasts?
What damage could be done to an airplane from that amount of explosive?
If it's enough to destroy a plane then there is ZERO point to the naked body scanners OR the invasive pat downs. A determined terrorist could "load up" so to speak, and go for a trip.
Slashdot Mirror
I just read an article saying that conficker is still alive and well, but the CnC servers are being blocked and/or taken down - essentially rendering the malware mostly harmless with the head cut off.
It's interesting to read about this, I played around with tweet-my-pc a while ago and the amount of control available through the twitter system is interesting. Putting your CnC on a massive and pervasive system that someone else keeps up and pays the bills for (FB or twitter) is brilliant.
However, I heard that twitter was going to start cracking down on accounts being used for such things. Perhaps they just simply can't?
I live in a semi-rural community that has fairly fast internet options (cable, DSL) and even rural surrounding areas have or are getting DSL and cable internet as well. My cable is at 10Mbps. A small local telco is also fiberizing the whole town. I have unlit fiber near my house already.
But I WORK in a community that is simply in the dark ages. There are places in the US, having paved roads and electricity and running water, that are within 15 miles of a small city and maybe 30 miles of a large city, where a significant number of people have some or all of the following conditions:
1) No "high speed" internet from DSL or Cable. Simply non-existant at any speed.
2) No line-of-sight wireless broadband
3) No cell phone reception from any carrier - in a dead zone
4) The phone lines they do have are crap.
5) Satellite internet is avail but often is approaching $90 a month or more for laggy and inconsistent performance
5) Wireless WAN internet over cellular, if not in a dead zone, is often at 1.5 Mbps, the device costs sometimes $100 or more, contracts if required can be $60 per month and require a 2 year commitment for a max transfer of 5 GB per month. (or, Virgin's mobile which claims unlimited but isn't)
6) The only option is dialup - 56k babeee!
I read on here somewhere that globally a 1.5 Mbps "broadband" connection is no longer considered broadband. Believe me, there are some folks who just want anything more than dialup.
It's great that the boys over at Symantec have found out that there are malware toolkits on the interwebs.
Maybe next they will develop a program that will remove viruses and other malware without breaking computers or, as I've seen, forcing customers to call India tech support who charg $90 to remove those extra special tough ones.
Then the next step will be to do that without bringing the computers to a crawl.
lol a cry for help on myspace, all that's heard is cricket chirps as a tumbleweed bounces by.
Wait, not lol, this is a serious tragedy, how politically incorrect to find humor in a thread discussing mass layoffs and shooting sprees?
Oh, wait, I'm the one that brought up the shooting spree. Bummer. I feel so bad now. I'm going to go lay down. Good thing I don't have a myspace account, that would be the last straw.
http://www.examiner.com/us-headlines-in-national/arizona-shooting-update-blogger-posts-jared-loughner-s-myspace-posts-online
This guy had a myspace. Just sayin...
A million bucks worth of kit, smuggled out in a "small bag?!"
I'm guessing they are using 'cop math'.
My bet : they calculated that the small kit can be reproduced and / or reverse engineered, and the resulting copies will result in an overall loss to the original company over the sales life of the product, equaling one million dollars in losses.
Cop math? I was thinking RIAA math.
Everyone knows the dead birds are due to HAARP and weather modification but are afraid to say it. Come on people! Break out the tinfoil hats and fire up the conspiracy theory machine.
Just curious, I don't come across too many people who are "that" good and don't have to be diplomatic at least a little.
The question is diplomatic to whom. Many bigshots get a "Don't you know who I am? You're a nobody so when I tell you to jump you jump" attitude. Actually some of the worst think the world consists of kissing ass or being kissed. You very quickly notice what category he thinks you fall into.
From my observation there's more than one kind of diplomacy or political gymnastics when dealing with people... There's the mind numbed robot who has been "trained" to be a patronizing schmuck, kissing tail by reflex, not daring to offend no matter who or what.
Then there's the person who deals with people carefully purely out of manipulation in order to get what they want from who they want.
Eh, I worked for the same company three times (never fired, quit over pay each time), refused to be in the installation or service departments (the owner of the company told me what to do, no one else), laid out often, told the boss "fuck you" several times, walked off of job sites, refused to do certain jobs and told a helper I'd kill him. I refused to wear the company uniforms, I would not carry the pager if I did not want to, and I refused to call in for POs or to justify any part, piece or tool I decided I needed on my service van. If I needed it, I bought it using the company account or CC. Not to mention wrecking a truck and running into the shop (two separate incidents). Thing was I was a valuable employee because I could fix any piece of HVAC/R equipment, estimate jobs in half the time of our estimator, sell upgrades and new jobs, interact with most customers very well, and would run twice as many service calls with the same percentage of call backs as our "best" service tech, and would consistently bill out well over 300k a year. Some folks are actually worth having, no matter how PITA they are. And that, 9 times out of ten, is based on the money.
That's pretty cool that you really knew your stuff, you had high billables, and they obviously tolerated you. But have you tamed down the 'tude over the years, or are you still as much of a jerk? Nothing personal, I don't know you at all, but it seems from your post you actually know that you can be a pain in the ass... It's not like you are unaware of how you "come across" - some ppl are clueless of how they come across, I was in that boat once. Or was it just that particular employer or that industry that pushed your buttons? LOL. Just curious, I don't come across too many people who are "that" good and don't have to be diplomatic at least a little.
At least it wasn't in LOLcat.
It's "funny" how there's all this FCC internet regulation, WTF investigation, and renewed vigor with "net neutrality" crap now that wikileaks has dropped the massive turd on the white house front door.
Before it was really just whining about lack of sales tax on internet sales, and spam, but now that the dirty laundry is embarrassing powers that be, they are flexing their muscles and lashing out at "the internet".
His movies might be packs of lies of joke level quality, but they are well done packs of lies of joke level quality.
He tells his lies very convincingly, as if he truly believes them himself. I saw Sicko and the way he portrayed euro socialized medicine put the programs in such good light, it made them look amazing and a must-have. His mistake was not showing even a single solitary piece of information that was negative. He forgot that nothing is perfect and that most people are not total idiots.
The purpose of his movie Sicko, I think, was not a documentary. His purpose of Sicko, just guessing here, was to show that the US health care costs and insurance system are messed up and that there are other ideas. In that regard, it WAS done well....
As a disclaimer I do not like Moore's politics and seriously doubt his patriotism. This stunt with Assange only makes sense because he and Assange are, apparently, birds of a feather.
I guess the main takeaway here is that Michael Moore is ALSO an annoying punk who likes to poke finger in the eye of the establishment and stir things up.
Also Michael Moore is very good at what he does, whether or not you think he is a higher life form than pond scum.
Fitting he should post bail.
Assange should head for a non-extradition country and keep his head down because he will shortly become very "accident prone".
I second this. I also work in the industry and people generally don't know that not only do you have to be outside, but you have to have a clear line of sight to the sky and not be near obstructions like buildings. Also, the higher off the ground you are, or the higher the elevation, the better. Even in the best conditions, the call quality can vary as a satellite goes over the horizon and passes your call to another satellite. Also, satellite calls are very expensive, and the hand held units, although getting smaller (like the Iridium 9555 handset), are still bigger than a large cell phone.
How..... Handy. Suddenly AT+T doesn't look so bad.
Or, if his life is like how I play GTA3, he has an infinite assortment of guns, ammo, flamethrowers, armor, health, tanks and race cars to simply blow stuff up for hours on end....
This is probably one of the most amusing articles and discussions I've read on /. in a long time
Did you just post a malware distribution URL? As a live href?
I hope that was munged, edited, or otherwise neutralized. Otherwise, that was reckless.
Also, as evidenced by your partially-anonymized email header, the spam zombie server seems to be associated with Walgreens. Nice piece of malware intel, there.
Nope, I was reckless and all I blanked out was my guys email address. HOWEVER I'm not totally insane, the urls didn't work for me when I checked - My thought is they had already been dealt with.
Delivered-To: xxxxxxxx@gmail.com Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of 1f01dd8d3layfovciatke43yaaaaabn3glabcerig44yaaaaa@email.walgreens.com designates 216.33.63.66 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=1f01dd8d3layfovciatke43yaaaaabn3glabcerig44yaaaaa@email.walgreens.com Reply-To: "support" Bounces_to: Walgreens.1f01dd8d3layfovciatke43yaaaaabn3glabcerig44yaaaaa@email.walgreens.com X-SS: 1-1-10920280-574949095 X-BFI: 1f01dd8d3layfovciatke43yaaaaabn3glabcerig44yaaaaa Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:07:40 EST From: Adobe Subject: Action Required : Upgrade New Adobe Acrobat Reader 2011 For Windows And Mac To: xxxxxxx@gmail.com
ADOBE PDF READER SOFTWARE UPGRADE NOTIFICATION This is to remind that a new version of Adobe Acrobat Reader with enhanced features for viewing, creating, editing, printing and internet-sharing PDF documents has been released. To upgrade your application: + Go to http://www.adobe-2011-downloads.net/ + Get your options, download and upgrade. Thanks and best regards, John Watt Adobe Acrobat Reader Support Copy rights Adobe 2010 © All rights reserved []
A customer of mine got this email. He forwarded it to me, not because he thought it might be a scam, but because he remembered I had put on foxit reader instead.
I explained a little bit about how it wasn't from adobe and wasn't going to an adobe site.
A quick google: http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Watt+Adobe+Acrobat+Reader+Support&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Let me clarify if I may. Where I reside the copper is all owned by AT&T. There are various vendors of DSL but ultimately they are reselling AT&T. The lines are horrid. Routine outages, etc. The vendors are out of luck, the problem is rarely theirs, it is due to the AT&T infrastructure.
... I would likely choose comcast.
I've had cable internet and cell phones (no landline) since 2003 and have loved it.
Given that I am "hooked" on fast cable internet, can't be bothered to pay for a landline phone, and know that the DSL options will have problems
And, as I said, I know fiber is coming and I will switch. I know that the cable companies do and/or want to throttle video on demand from netflix et-al because they would rather you watch TV from their main product - TV. Which I don't.
My household will routinely be streaming three different netflix streams at one time. Two different PC's and a Roku box.
Comcast cable internet is rarely the only option for internet in any given community. There is almost always an option to get a DSL product from the phone company. Which means you basically have to have a landline. So you pay somewhere close to the same amount of money for much slower internet.
..... Goodbye cable internet. I don't have comcast I have a "smaller" cable internet supplier, Mediacom. Comcast is all around us though.
If I was in a community where it was DSL on AT+T copper or comcast I'd probably go with comcast.
There is fiber optic cable ran within 10 feet of my property. It will someday have phone/tv/internet going over it. At the moment it is dark, but once it is available
Yeah I'd rather have a @gmail.com and actually TELL that to someone than to make a @facebook.com and tell that to someone.
I admit I have a facebook account (along with apparently all the rest of the world) but I don't actually brag about it.
It just isn't professional. Neither is @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com and certainly not @aol.com. @gmail.com is semi-professional yet I do have my own domains which I would put on a business card.
Not only is there already such a virus, the PC usually comes with it preinstalled.
Let me guess ... You are referring to Norton 360 or McAfee?
I think windows was what he meant
Awwww... come on, windows pc will usually get on the internet properly at least when first set up, and I've seen norton a/v immediately break the networking on a perfectly working windows pc - more than once.
However, I do see your point windows was probably what he meant.
Not only is there already such a virus, the PC usually comes with it preinstalled.
Let me guess ... You are referring to Norton 360 or McAfee?
What is the most powerful explosive that can be shoved into someone's ass or vagina or implanted into breasts?
What is the maximum practical volume of said explosive that could fit into a typical ass, vagina or pair of breasts?
What damage could be done to an airplane from that amount of explosive?
If it's enough to destroy a plane then there is ZERO point to the naked body scanners OR the invasive pat downs. A determined terrorist could "load up" so to speak, and go for a trip.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/
The above story reports that the grope searches are just to encourage people to use the naked body scanners.
And they reported them for animal cruelty for good measure.