Forums > Social Chat > Viruses

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005

There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers...

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
Good luck!

It's a good idea to back up everything often anyway because you never know when you'll get a virus or some hardware fail.

How did you get it out of interest? What software do you use? If you use as much non-microsoft software as you can you'll reduce your chances of getting anything;

Firefox for web, webmail (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc) for email or thunderbird for email and never open attachments that are .exe, .pif or .bat you should be fine.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
It was disguised as a tracklog route map. I thought it was a self extracting zip file. Should have gone to a more reliable source to get it. Plus should have scanned it before opening.

To look on the bright side my laptop could do with a good clean up. At least I'm managing to save the stuff I need.

If everything seems under control, your not going fast enough!

It's not the size of the wave, it's the length of the ride!

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005

Written by: kiteman

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I would love to bump into one of these @ss holes that program viruses and slowly tortue them to within an inch of there life

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Re-program the computers so that every action brings up the Microsoft Office paperclip assistant.

They'll be hollow shells of men within hours...

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
Doesn't that happen at the moment?

Last time I used Office I was a hollow shell within minutes

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
I hate natural viruses more.

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
Yes strike the hackers down with plague in a cruel yet amusing twist of fate..

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
natural viruses are amazingly cool in some ways, in the same way as computer ones. I really like something so good at doing what it does. But there bad the the people who get them (in both cases, but natural viruses more so....)

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
Well I've calmed down now and got all the stuff I need backed up.

Still want to make these people suffer in some way for their cheep little thrill they get out of P1ssing people off.

Gonna get drunk to cheer me up then start the clean up tommorrow.

If everything seems under control, your not going fast enough!

It's not the size of the wave, it's the length of the ride!

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
just make sure when you put all your backed up files back onto the computer you scan them. most viruses have a habbit of placing themselves in lots of folders.

Do we sleep when we die?

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
I got this real evil thing the other week that shut down my firewall every time i logged on. I didn’t get how i was getting so many viruses as it said the firewall was running. Got rid of it in the end by getting my brother in law to sort it, i love having an IT technician in the family Problems i got rid of all but 1 hats [censored] with activeX. I haven’t been able to use MY documents in ages. Instead i have to use the crappy little window used to open/save files in explorer. By the way the reason i cant just download the antivirus is because it runs using java. the irony of it!.

Im up for a mass mob setting out with virtual pitchforks to hunt those little weasels down.

fire leads to creation

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
in two years of not running either virus scanners or adware killer thingies, i [icked up 7 virii (three of which i knew what they were and wanted to keep - coffee holder is not a virus), and 18 bits of spyware. so i was pretty happy with that

"beg beg grovel beg grovel"
"master"
--FSA

"There was an arse there, i couldn't help myself"
--Rougie

Posted: 4th Jun 2005
Theory of is great, kiddies (and people with the maturity of) writing crappy visual basic programs that really can't be classed as viruses/worms in the true sense but exploit users incompetance/good nature as a method of infection and spreading sucks.

I'm a big fan of network protocol/cryptographic reverse engineering (think of it like doing hardcore mathematics puzzles). It's great fun because it's something that's largely self taught, using your own code and experience to do the job. The kind of info it generates can in turn be used for worms, which i rarely release my findings. If I do then i'll always contact the software publisher in advance and give them adequate time to fix the problem. What I release is in no way useable by anyone who doesn't have a good understanding of the topic, i.e. not the average person who writes malicious code.

I'm a big believer that computer damage is not in any way different to any form of criminal damage, and people performing it (virus writers, script kiddies etc) are criminals who should be locked up with the rest of em. I don't however see a problem with challenging existing technologies, as that will only lead to a positive step forward in the world of security etc and let people know what is possible with current ones. Challenging existing technologies however doesn't include the use of any unwilling participants, destroying anyone's data or invading anyone's privacy.

By far the main problem facing the world of network security is poorly educated users who don't keep their software upto date, don't follow good advice, don't read instructions about the kit their using, don't use a firewall etc, don't use or keep antivirus upto date, do open binary attachments etc. That said it is possible get hit by new worms and really pretty nasty spyware even if you do follow all these points. I'd really like to see much, much, much better policing when it comes to computing (don't even get me started on the topic of the complete police incompetance in the UK at catching internet pedophiles ).

Posted: 4th Jun 2005
script kiddies drive me crazy, i enjoy doing what i do to them in return, teaches them a lesson.

as for you last comment flid, its a subject that makes me and most people very angry.

Do we sleep when we die?

Posted: 4th Jun 2005
It doesn't really make me angry, because I think it encourages people to use different systems and software so the market is balanced out more.

If everyone used different systems, writing viruses would be much harder and the chance of anyone getting on e would go down quite a lot. OS X is yet to have a virus recorded in the 4+ years it's been out and thats partly because it's a more secure system but mostly because not enought people use it to make it 'worth it'. It's more or less the same story with Linux as well.

I think that a world where everyone used different programs working on top of open standards would be a much nicer one! Of cause there would be bugs and viruses but they'd be much less efficient.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 4th Jun 2005

Written by: DragonFury

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script kiddies drive me crazy, i enjoy doing what i do to them in return, teaches them a lesson

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what's that?

Written by: Sym_

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If everyone used different systems, writing viruses would be much harder and the chance of anyone getting on e would go down quite a lot.

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Have you never heard the phrase "there's no such thing as security through obscurity"?



Every piece of software ever released is going to have a bug found sooner or later in it, irrelavent of what OS it's written on. Open source software helps people find exploits 100 fold over closed source. Having source when looking for exploits is like taking the dictionary into a foreign language exam. Sure exploits tend to get fixed in new versions, but the linux world is full of admins who don't really totally know what their doing, and there's loads of exploitable systems out there if you look. Security of MS systems has been helped a LOT by auto update. If a significant amount of people used email clients other than outlook, people would write worms for outdated buggy versions of them I'm 100% sure. It's not microsoft which makes software especially prone to viruses, it's that it's the best target to write for as so many people use it (plus of course most 'viruses' are just slightly modified versions of existing ones by idiot vb kiddies, that anti virus companies report to help get their numbers up a bit). Running Thunderbird on a mac and thinking your immune to viruses/trojans is like living in cloud cuckoo land.

Posted: 4th Jun 2005
erm, thanks flid, i think! What are you trying to say? Do you have a point?

Running Tbird on OS X will be loads more secure than running outlook in windows, but I never said anything about being immune!

My point was that most viruse writers have more of an easy time because they are writing for one system - therefore if there was more varity of software the damage would be reduced.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 4th Jun 2005




I agree



(I have these debates (arguments) over thunderbird/outlook, firefox/msie on a regular basis at work)

Posted: 4th Jun 2005
cool

Ps, sorry if my questions seemed a bit harsh - on rereading they give the wrong tone!

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 4th Jun 2005
i use firefox, even without the better sercurity (or lack of attacks against it) i find it a better browser. Better features and less demanding on system resources.

And yeah, OSX doesn't get attacked because only less than 5% of the market use it. Virus writers usually want to cause lots of problems and bring systems down, so they write for what everyone uses. The older mac OSs when macs where greater in household numbers, had many viruses.

Do we sleep when we die?