Virus Bomb

[ceagle]

Be very careful today, everyone. :/
I just received a boatload of viruses and who-knows-what-else to ALL of my unpublicized, barely used broadband accounts. Luckily I have full isolation of these, they can't launch and they can't be passed on or propogate, but there may be something sinister brewing out there in cracker-land this weekend... so please be careful :|

Turn off PREVIEW if you use Outlook Express or Netscape Messenger mail, and go to OFFLINE to read messages, even pulling out your connection cord to the internet while you look at if you won't be too inconvenienced. And don't click on anything suspicious.

*grumble grrrrr...*

Comments

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Between Zone Alarm and Norton AV, My hatches are totally battened down :)

I'm getting several hundred spams per day now, a 5x+ increase over the last two weeks. I dump them from the Yahoo web page interface without ever downloading them.

Even then, several bugs have gotten through Yahoo's spam filters and I've just deleted them manually.

Thanks for the heads up though, the threat is very real.

CYa!
Mako
Bug Proof Zzyzxian

[buran.livejournal.com]

Or use a Mac.

*pats powerbook*

Or Linux, or something else other than winblows exploder and outsuck.

[buran.livejournal.com]

Or don't use Windows -- but I do have a windows machine (which is never used for email) which is double firewalled and has a virus scanner on it. Er, actually, the update service for the scanner timed out, but I have located a free alternative which I just need to get around to installing. But since I don't use the Windows box for much besides web browsing (using Firefox), and it's been turned off for many many weeks, I'm not worried about it.

[draca-serpens.livejournal.com]

I've got Zone Alarm, Panda and Neowatch. Neowatch was tested and passed 100% to every kind of bad thing you could throw at it- pings, Microsoft SQLs, telemarketing sites, popups, Trojan scans, etc. :)

[makovette.livejournal.com]

I use W2K on my laptop, XP on one of my desktops, RH Linux v8 for my web server and FreeBSD on my play machine.

MS makes the best desktop OS there is, but just like any of the *ix OSs, you must have a brain to run it. Being an OS snob doesn't put money into a sysadmin's pocket as easily as an OS agnostic that will configure and fix anything out there for a paycheck.

Learn it and use it all for a more enriching career is my advice. CE has done a splendid job in making a living supporting Mac 9, X and all flavors of PC systems for a real world example.

CYa!
Mako

[buran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can and do use just about everything there is. I'm not a "snob" as you put it.

The point I was trying to make is that Windows and its web/mail clients is known to have all kinds of vulnerabilities and issues that just aren't there in other OSes. It seems to me that with all the problems out there, the best solution is to use something more dependable, since there's no sign of there being a real and total clampdown on all the problems.

I don't think MS makes the best desktop OS. A lot of other people don't, either. Some do. It's all individual preference.

[ex-c-p.livejournal.com]

"MS makes the best desktop OS there is"

I hope you're joking.

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Well your initial post did have an air of elitism about it ;-)

Regarding the total number of vulnerabilities, linux is just as bad as MS, BSD (including OS X) is the best of the lot (but not perfect either).

I was getting constant updates from RHN for the kernel (at least one update a month) as well as the associated RH distro programs (bunches of those, I lost count), at least until RH dropped support for my flavor of their product.

Over all I was getting *many* more patches per month for linux than for Win32.

The primary vulnerability in Outlook is the loose nut behind the mouse. That's a people problem (so called "social engineering), not a code problem.

The problems in running say a 500 desktop *ix network compared to a MS one is Non Trivial. I have been the IT Director for two companies, and only a lunatic with mighty deep pockets would roll out *ix on the desktop given today's state of *ix desktop technologies.

My preference is MS on the company desktop with a mix of *ix and MS in the server room. Web servers would be BSD, DNS and AD (vs LDAP) on MS, databases would be Oracle on BSD or linux depending (I haven't spun up an Oracle cluster for a while) plugged into either a JBOD or a SAN depending on the data store size projections and the avialable $.

Email has two solutions worth considering: Using Outlook talking to a imap BSD server and and Meeting Maker running on a *ix box with a vpn backdoor is one solution, or just biting the bullet and using Exchange + vpn to solve the messaging problem.

Exchange is lower sysadmin cost wise, but doesn't have the granualrity of control and maintthat I can get out of an imap soultion. 'tis a puzzlement for me on which way to go there.

I'd have to crunch TCO vs. uptime and hassle factor to make a decision on messaging I think.

CYa!
Mako

[altonwings.livejournal.com]

Ew... I hate that crap. Why bother innocent people who did nothing wrong with these virus'? I seriously don't understand the mindset to intentionally want to hurt other people for kicks...

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Not at all, I'm quite serious. My definition of "best" is based on the metrics that exist behind the corporate firewall, not on the machine in the living room.

TCO is a primary driver of desktop OS choice. User training costs across a standardized application suite, hours of admin/desktop, vendor software support and other similar corporate realities are my drivers.

I've never had a job applicant that didn't know how to run Outlook and Word on Win32 for example. The company spends $0 on that, compared to say Mozilla on *ix which has significant user training costs associated with it.

On the admin side, compare setting up and configuring CUPS on every desktop compared to the printer sharing in Win32 - the added admin time and user training burden is non-trivial in admin resources (corp speak for $).

My last experience with large scale Apple networks was purging Mac OS 7 and converting a company (~500 PCs in three locations with a WAN and Sun OS/Solaris server backbone) to NT 4 back in '97, so I'm stale on Mac-ology. I do like the idea of BSD under OS X, but X is pretty new and still suffering from some teething pains.

Mac OS XI running MS Office has the potential to put *ix corporate desktop in larger numbers, but anytime you roll out multiple OS's, you effectively split your IT desktop wallet into pieces and drive costs up, which is a bad thing.

CYa!
Mako

Retraction/Apology

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Well your initial post did have an air of elitism about it ;-)

No it didn't and it was wrong of me to say that it did. My apologies for stating something that obviously was wrong.

Mako

Re: Retraction/Apology

[buran.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it. :) You had some good things to say too.

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

This is a real problem at my alma mater... anyone with a Whitworth email account now has to use the Outlook web client to access their email. And they can't turn off the preview plane. If the techs were smart, they'd get rid of it.

-=TK

Re: Retraction/Apology

[makovette.livejournal.com]

My Lesson Learned for today is:

Never post before the asprin kicks in, unwarrented snarkiness may result :-(

Thanks!
Mako

[swandog.livejournal.com]

Or better yet...DON'T use Outlook...ick. :P I use Mozilla Mail and by default have the preview turned off, as well as javascript, and with Spam Assasin running, plus my own mail filters. I don't get any spam in my inbox anymore; it all filters off into my spam and junk folders (100+ of them a day), which I delete once a week. *wingsnuggles*

[neocanis.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning, C Eagle!

That's some scary stuff! Just few days ago, I have get a email that mimic my other regular email so well, that fooled me to opened it O_o So... I guess people should watch out for those mimic email, that copy the subject line and the sender just like the way it should be from your regularly received email. I just hope that one email don't come back and haunt me!!?

[genecatlow.livejournal.com]

I got about 60+ emails, pretty much 95% spam and
clearly so. It took 5 minutes to get all my mail.
Some of it was probably the type of stuff you
were referring to. Tossed in the trash before it
could even get a chance to do harm. (But... all
of that got through even with the spam-blocker
enabled... org...)

[neocanis.livejournal.com]

Maybe... but that perfect mimic spam was my first one ever, and before that one, the spams were fairly easy to spotted... I hope that one is going to be the only one I get :-(

[filia-seal.livejournal.com]

John Dvorak a has very interesting editorial on this, here . It seems the virus writers are getting better at spoofing legitimate emails. Pretending to be email from system administrators with attached documentation or patches. Scary.

[neocanis.livejournal.com]

Thanks :-) It is very scary indeed. Especially about "the Big One" :-X