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Friday Virus Update |
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 Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but while our Macs are largely unaffected by all the viruses going around, many of us still have to deal with them in one way or another, such as having to disinfect Windows networks or users, or just personally going to random Windows users' houses and slapping them in the face with a trout.
Now, to give everyone and update on all the wonderful Windows virii out there, here's a "Friday Virus Update".
At the top of the order is the Blaster virus (or MSBlaster) that we talked about last week. It's still making the rounds and doing it's share of damage, plus with the help of n'er-do-wells, mutating into different strains.
Next up is Welchia, a.k.a. Nachi. It appears at first to be a "friendly" virus and actually goes to MS's site and downloads the patch for Blaster. This one uses the same DCOM vulnerability that Blaster does, but also targets IIS, Microsoft's Web serving software. The problem with this little bugger is that, as an internetnews.com article points out, it's been eating up bandwidth like Bono eats babies (my metaphor, not theirs), and Symantec currently has it rated at DEFCON 4 (out of 5).
Lastly, the Sobig virus. It's currently classified as a category 4 by Symantec and it's said to be the fastest spreading virus ever. As Symantec states, Sobig is a "mass-mailing, network-aware worm that uses its own SMTP engine to propagate and attempts to create a copy of itself on accessible network shares". According to Yahoo! News, Sobig can also update itself (ala the T1000 unit in T2) to add "features" such as denial of service or possibly spam relaying. VNUNET says that Sobig strain F is also set to "download additional malware between 20.00 and 23.00 GMT tonight and again on Sunday" which could allow the virus to do just about anything.
Together these viruses form the Triumvirate of Doom, wreaking havoc everywhere. I'm sure you've heard of some of this havoc on the news, but humor me and let me point out some of the many places that have been...uh...wreaked. A school system in Bowling Green, KY was crippled, while another nearby district that uses Macs was unaffected. Air Canada was hit hard, forcing passengers to check in "manually" (whatever that means). According to CNET, the Welchia/Nachi worm has hit MIT, Lockheed Martin, and the Department of Defense.
On top of that, ruminate on this fact: A Security Focus article states that back in January, the "Slammer worm penetrated a private computer network at Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant". The plant was offline at the time due to other issues, plus it had a "redundant analog backup", but still sort of scary all the same. (Note that this is the very same power plant that people are pointing the finger at for last week's blackout)
Phew. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted covering all this virus stuff. I just want to get on my computer and go to town - creating, designing, playing games, what have you. I don't want to have to deal with crap like viruses.
That's just the opposite of IT guys though. They love Microsoft because it means job security and lots of moolah for fixing everyone's computers (they must be loving it right now) and we feel for all the hapless people out there at the mercy of the system.
And now Microsoft is warning of more potential problems - namely critical flaws in Internet Explorer. A patch has already been issued by the Redmond behemoth, but users who don't know/haven't patched could be leaving their computers "open to attack through a fake Web page or an HTML e-mail that contains the specific exploit code".
So if you haven't jumped ship from using a Microsoft-written Operating System, we strongly urge you to consider it. If not for yourself, think of the children, man! (the more infected Windows machines, the more babies Bono eats)
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August 22 2003, 10:03 AM EDT, by
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Comments:
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| iKen |
8/22/03, 12:40 PM EDT |
lol... man, I had no idea bono ate a baby when a computer was infected with a virus. But now I know, and knowing is half the battle... :)
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| ZackMac |
8/23/03, 4:41 AM EDT |
And GI Joe is the real american hero!
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| Wasabe |
8/25/03, 6:39 PM EDT |
Hey. I eat babies sometimes when I have a virus. BABY carrots! HAHAHAHA. I'm so funny.
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| Jonahan |
8/26/03, 8:00 AM EDT |
LOL.... that's just evil ;)
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| Wasabe |
8/26/03, 11:35 AM EDT |
Whatever happened to friday rumor roundups?
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| Jonahan |
8/26/03, 11:43 AM EDT |
Dead. I killed 'em, Jim. They were cool, but there were a few problems with doing it. One is that took a LOT of work to get all those rumors rounded up, put the pieces together, and do the speculating...and even then I didn't think I alone could do as good a job as the "professional" rumor sites. Some of them do a weekly roundup anyhow (I think Macrumors, and I -think- I even stole the name of the column from them...not sure about that though).
Plus I didn't feel that enough people liked it for the time I put into it. I could easily use that time and crank out a bunch of "silly and yet informative" articles instead. But that's not to say I couldn't bring it back.... :)
If I got enough positives, I could start doing it. At least bi-weekly or something. Lemme know!
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