Note also - attacks started on 1st of February from places like Australia and New Zealand. This was Saturday USA time. "It's Feb. 1st everyone..." It's 2nd of Feb in Australia/NZ etc. MyDoom.b has probably already started attacking from here...
I have this exact problem where I work as an IP network engineer.
I share and open office with our RF techs, as we both need to be close to our cable head end. One of the RF techs continually turns the radio full blast, then wanders off and leaves it that way (and I can't stand the station choice - MMM, Melbourne Australia) Occaisonaly I ask him to turn it down - but it is back at full volume next time. Apart from this - the open office works OK, as the noisy RF tech is out of the office most of the day. The rest of the people in the office only hassle me when they really need to and the other IT engineers are located in different cities. Which means a lot of projects are completed via e-mail/phone and remote access. A noisy radio is the only thing that repeatedly breaks concentration on these projects.
I work for an Australian regional ISP. We've blocked 135 & 4444 from our customer networks. We regularly check the logs and report on hits from the logs. Helpdesk contacts infected customer's and assists with the patching if required (initial contact via e-mail). If customer won't patch - disable internet access. So far we haven't had to disable access. We are small enough to be able to do this (user base in the mid-thousands). We haven't noticed enough infections to need to go down the redirect to web page track. Most customers are able to sort themselves out once they get instructional e-mail from the helpdesk.
I went for a job with Telstra last year - basically for rolling out what I think was going to be the Solaris based back-end for this. Sun One products.
I'm sort of glad I didn't get the job. I worked for a short time for a Telstra subsiduary. They had (and probably still have) a large (100+) number of UNIX and Linux based servers and some Solaris desktops.
They (the subsiduary) kept the IT support staff to a bare minimum and expected them to work hugely excessive hours. If Telstra are anything like this they may have problems keeping people to support their environment.
I'm be interested to see how Microsoft react to this. E.g. Counter offers, as per the City of Munich decision to go with Linux desktops:
Munich spurns Ballmer's rebates
Maybe the author *meant* to spell breach as "breech" in the article link:
"SCO is currently suing IBM Corp. for breech of contract for allegedly supplying some of that Unix code as part of the open source development process for Linux. "
From dictionary.com:
breech:
breech ( P ) Pronunciation Key (brch) n. The lower rear portion of the human trunk; the buttocks.
breach:
1 a. An opening, a tear, or a rupture. b. A gap or rift, especially in or as if in a solid structure such as a dike or fortification. 2 A violation or infraction, as of a law, a legal obligation, or a promise.
I think in this case we are all of the opinion that SCO is an arse (or ass if you prefer the American spelling).
In a previous job I've found Linux and BeOS desktop installations. While I was pro alternatives to Microsoft, there was the concern about security - e.g. open e-mail relays, unpatched servers. The company ended up with a policy of permitting Linux on the desktop, but not supporting it. If you had an application issue - you were on your own. The only users that ran it had a clue and we didn't run into issues. Being a research environment, Linux ended up replacing SGI systems as the scientific workstation standard.
I work as a Solaris consultant. One of our customers runs Sol x86 on an FTP server. The customer chose x86 because Solaris (sparc) was the only UNIX they had in house and they wanted something they would be familiar with.
They wanted a UNIX FTP server quickly, using hardware they already had - they weren't happy with the NT4 based system they used to use. I run Sol 8 x86 at home (as well as Linux, XP etc.) and was able the help/build the system quickly because of that familiarity.
I know that this could be seen as simply
the guilty whinge of "why aren't they catching
real criminals" - but I wonder what this is
costing the Taiwan Police to carry out. Maybe
they don't have much other crime if the link
below is to be believed, but as the article
states "students play only a tiny role in the larger problem of pirated music". To spell
it out - the more serious crime is that of
pirating music for profit (i.e. forgeries) but
the police appear to be going for the easy and
obvious targets as a example.
http://travel.dk.com/wdr/TW/mTW_Crim.htm
It's probably also worth explaining that
even though the political party is called
"Liberal", they are actually a slightly (or more?)
right wing party, similar to the US Republican party in some ways. Following the recent Queensland and Western Australian elections, South Australia is the only Australian state with a Liberal (capital L) government. Of course we also have a Liberal federal government who also can be relied on for a few braindead privacy laws (e.g. self regulation of direct marketers). We may get our chance to find out if the Labor party are any better following a federal election later this year.
On a related not, speaking of keeping a contract
open source friendly, this is an initiative
started by the System Administrators Guild of
Australia (of which I am a member).
The Open Source Developer's Agreement "provides suggested variation to employment contracts that would allow employees to develop Open Source software without encumbrance from their employer, where there is no conflict of interest." (from the FAQ).
Slashdot Mirror
Just waiting for the voting guides.
http://www.filter-conroy.org/
The Australian Government issued warnings about IE today as well:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/19/2795684.htm
http://www.palinaspresident.com/
I've been back to visit it every day for entertainment and don't know of anything like it :)
Brocade would be known by a fair few IT engineers that have dealt SANs and enterprise level servers.
I just use this:
Monkey Shakespeare Simulator
Maybe not as much fun, but without the faeces
I've noticed that Mozilla Firefox seems to give better results than IE
Note also - attacks started on 1st of February from places like Australia and New Zealand.
This was Saturday USA time.
"It's Feb. 1st everyone..."
It's 2nd of Feb in Australia/NZ etc. MyDoom.b has probably already started attacking from here...
Here's an article discussing this problem from
The Age
Umm... modded insightful ?
See the post below including the quote from the
SCO letter:
"Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software...
"
I'll spell it out - Windows is commercial software.
I have this exact problem where I work as an IP network engineer.
I share and open office with our RF techs, as we both need to be close to our cable head end.
One of the RF techs continually turns the radio full blast, then wanders off and leaves it that way (and I can't stand the station choice - MMM, Melbourne Australia)
Occaisonaly I ask him to turn it down - but it is back at full volume next time. Apart from this - the open office works OK, as the noisy RF tech is out of the office most of the day. The rest of the people in the office only hassle me when they really need to and the other IT engineers are located in different cities. Which means a lot of projects are completed via e-mail/phone and remote access. A noisy radio is the only thing that repeatedly breaks concentration on these projects.
I work for an Australian regional ISP.
We've blocked 135 & 4444 from our customer networks. We regularly check the logs and
report on hits from the logs.
Helpdesk contacts infected customer's and assists
with the patching if required (initial contact
via e-mail). If customer won't patch - disable internet access.
So far we haven't had to disable access.
We are small enough to be able to do this
(user base in the mid-thousands).
We haven't noticed enough infections to need to go down the redirect to web page track. Most customers are able to sort themselves out once they get instructional e-mail from the helpdesk.
I went for a job with Telstra last year - basically for rolling out what I think was going to be the Solaris based back-end for this. Sun One products.
I'm sort of glad I didn't get the job. I worked for a short time for a Telstra subsiduary. They had (and probably still have) a large (100+) number of UNIX and Linux based servers and some Solaris desktops.
They (the subsiduary) kept the IT support staff to a bare minimum and expected them to work hugely excessive hours. If Telstra are anything like this they may have problems keeping people to support their environment.
I'm be interested to see how Microsoft react to this. E.g. Counter offers, as per the City of Munich decision to go with Linux desktops: Munich spurns Ballmer's rebates
I blocked ports 135 and 4444 inbound on the border routers of my employer (a regional ISP) yesterday:
router 1:
deny tcp any any eq 135 (266649 matches)
deny tcp any any eq 4444 (95 matches)
router 2:
deny tcp any any eq 135 (331926 matches)
deny tcp any any eq 4444 (34 matches)
The above are from the last 23 hours
Maybe the author *meant* to spell breach as "breech" in the article link:
"SCO is currently suing IBM Corp. for breech of contract for allegedly supplying some of that Unix code as part of the open source development process for Linux. "
From dictionary.com:
breech:
breech ( P ) Pronunciation Key (brch)
n.
The lower rear portion of the human trunk; the buttocks.
breach:
1
a. An opening, a tear, or a rupture.
b. A gap or rift, especially in or as if in a solid structure such as a dike or fortification.
2 A violation or infraction, as of a law, a legal obligation, or a promise.
I think in this case we are all of the opinion that SCO is an arse (or ass if
you prefer the American spelling).
In a previous job I've found Linux and BeOS
desktop installations. While I was pro alternatives to Microsoft, there was the concern about security - e.g. open e-mail relays, unpatched servers. The company ended up with a policy of permitting Linux on the desktop, but not supporting it. If you had an application issue - you were on your own. The only users that ran it had a clue and we didn't run into issues. Being a research environment, Linux ended up replacing SGI systems as the scientific workstation standard.
Yes - Sun came from BSD, but Solaris is a mostly
System V OS.
I work as a Solaris consultant.
One of our customers runs Sol x86 on an FTP server.
The customer chose x86 because Solaris (sparc) was the only UNIX they had in house and they wanted something they would be familiar with.
They wanted a UNIX FTP server quickly, using hardware they already had -
they weren't happy with the NT4 based system they
used to use.
I run Sol 8 x86 at home (as well as Linux, XP etc.) and was able the help/build the system quickly because of that familiarity.
I know that this could be seen as simply
the guilty whinge of "why aren't they catching
real criminals" - but I wonder what this is
costing the Taiwan Police to carry out. Maybe
they don't have much other crime if the link
below is to be believed, but as the article
states "students play only a tiny role in the larger problem of pirated music". To spell
it out - the more serious crime is that of
pirating music for profit (i.e. forgeries) but
the police appear to be going for the easy and
obvious targets as a example.
http://travel.dk.com/wdr/TW/mTW_Crim.htm
I'm confused.
I use Mandrake at home, Debian at work
and am a former Amiga user.....
It's probably also worth explaining that
even though the political party is called
"Liberal", they are actually a slightly (or more?)
right wing party, similar to the US Republican party in some ways. Following the recent Queensland and Western Australian elections, South Australia is the only Australian state with a Liberal (capital L) government. Of course we also have a Liberal federal government who also can be relied on for a few braindead privacy laws (e.g. self regulation of direct marketers). We may get our chance to find out if the Labor party are any better following a federal election later this year.
On a related not, speaking of keeping a contract open source friendly, this is an initiative started by the System Administrators Guild of Australia (of which I am a member). The Open Source Developer's Agreement "provides suggested variation to employment contracts that would allow employees to develop Open Source software without encumbrance from their employer, where there is no conflict of interest." (from the FAQ).
I'm stating the obvious and this is most likely explained better in other posts, but people with a clue usually find work elsewhere.