OT - Malware experience

[mbstevens]

And of course there was brucie (may he rest in peace)

I was away when this happened...or are you being metaphorical?
I miss Brucie's comments.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

I was away when this happened...or are you being metaphorical?
I miss Brucie's comments.

Metaphorical, me thinks.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.12-12mdksmp, up 22 days, 18:06.]

demiblog 0.2.0 Released
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2007/06/28/demiblog-0.2.0/

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:31:37 GMT
Travis Newbury scribed:

I remember a few interesting characters. There was a fellow named
"Chip" that did Christmas stories that was always interesting,

I remember him. "Chimichanga" or something like that, from New Mexico but
moving back east. Nice guy, wonder why he gave up the habit?

a "Dan"
from Spain that was kind of fun. I remember he was a JavaScript
hater, but all his sites were packed with essencial JavaScript. (I
actually wrote him and asked why he did not follow his own philosophy
in his professional sites, he said becasuse he had a family to feed.)

I remember him, too. Could be acerbic but knew a real lot about certain
things (-networks, I think.)

And of course there was brucie (may he rest in peace)

A fountain of information. You could tell Brucie was Australian; he had
that vociferous imperative. I heard he retired to raise wombats in
Woomera.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 12 Jul 2007
20:30:53 GMT Blinky the Shark scribed:


I wonder... If being stoned was one's normal state, would
getting straight seem like a high?

I'm low on life.

 

[Bergamot]

[re: switching from Windows to Linux]
It is all a matter of personal preference.

Not entirely. I'd happily switch to Linux if they had sufficient
*usable* native applications, like a graphics editor beside the Gimp
(which I loathe). Not everything runs under Wine or Cross-over Office.

 

[Mike Minor]

I have a good friend who asked me to come out and take a look at her
daughter's computer because it was really slow. Spybot Search and Destroy
came up with 1,401 malware programs and/or tracking cookies. The anti-
virus came up with 89 viruses and trojans. I got everything cleaned up,
installed a Hosts manager, Firefox and Opera (default). Then I told them
that IE was off limits.

Three days to fix this. Scarey.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

I'll add my own horror story....keep in mind that I am an IT professional
with nearly 30 years experience. I have firewalls, AV programs, and spyware
programs running all the time.

Our daughter moved back home and began using our home computer. One day I
noticed that there were 32 browser windows open telling me I had a virus and
I should buy one of a variety of new programs to fix the problem. Yea,
RIGHT! I knew immediately that I had gotten some kind of a
virus/malware...( don't WANT to know WHERE that girl was surfing! )

Anyway, I started with my Norton's AV...it found nothing. So I ran AdAware,
Sysclean, Spybot Search and destroy, and did a manual search for various
known virus type files. They found a lot of cookies, and other mild type
threats, but nothing major. Meanwhile, the computer is possessed, opening
browser windows while we sleep, when trying to surf, when not trying to
surf, just whenever it wanted to.

Some of the adware clean up programs mentioned a virus, but none of them
could clean it. They would recommend one program or another. So I bought
Stopzilla and a couple of others that did me no good, other than telling me
there was a bug, but they couldn't fix them. After Googling a lot, I found
out I had SmitFraud. I found a website ( Geeks2go or something like that)
that mentioned a free program, SmitFraudFix. I figured since it was free,
why not. (now let me say, I am in no way affiliated with SmitFraudFix, so I
get nothing out of touting it.)

I downloaded it, ran it, rebooted and ran it again a few times, and low and
behold my problems were fixed. Since that time, we have not had any other
problems. Stopzilla has stopped a couple of subsequent intrusions in there
tracks, and SmitFraudFix keeps a vigilant eye on us.

Norton's scans every night, but in my opinion, it it just window dressing,
not doing a dammned thing to protect us. All in all I spent 3 weeks of
nights and weekends trying to clean up this mess. Just goes to show....

Mikey

 

[Tim Streater]

And you know to tell you the truth, I really don't have a
problem with windows.

I have AVG virus checker running ...

These two statements don't go together very well.

Personally I would throw the windows machine in the trash and use a Mac.

 

[Bergamot]

These two statements don't go together very well.

Personally I would throw the windows machine in the trash and use a Mac.

I hope you aren't implying that Macs are immune to attacks, because that
is patently false. Besides, a little prudence regarding AV is simple
common sense these days. I've been using MS stuff since before Windows
and have had exactly 1 virus in all that time, and that was many years ago.

BTW, I think Mac is the clumsiest box I ever had to work with. I don't
get the zeal some people have for them at all.

 

[Tim Streater]

I hope you aren't implying that Macs are immune to attacks, because that
is patently false.

Win: 114,000 and counting
Mac: None known.

Besides, a little prudence regarding AV is simple
common sense these days. I've been using MS stuff since before Windows
and have had exactly 1 virus in all that time, and that was many years ago.

BTW, I think Mac is the clumsiest box I ever had to work with. I don't
get the zeal some people have for them at all.

Oh really? Funny, I do all my web development on one. having said that,
though, the Win version of Eudora is much the better so at work I keep
an XP lappy just for that.

And the Mac is not clumsy, either. I lost count of the number of times
under XP where it won't let me move a file, just because it's open. On
the Mac, you move a file elsewhere on a volume, the apps simply adjust
to the new reality. That's the OS working for me instead of the other
way around.

 

[andrew]

[...]

BTW, I think Mac is the clumsiest box I ever had to work with. I don't
get the zeal some people have for them at all.

Oh really? Funny, I do all my web development on one. having said that,
though, the Win version of Eudora is much the better so at work I keep
an XP lappy just for that.

And the Mac is not clumsy, either. I lost count of the number of times
under XP where it won't let me move a file, just because it's open. On
the Mac, you move a file elsewhere on a volume, the apps simply adjust
to the new reality. That's the OS working for me instead of the other
way around.

Perhaps Mac users should form an uneasy alliance with Linux users in
this malaware / virus debate Somebody once said 'the enemy of my
enemy is my friend'. I just hope I am not quoting that Mario Puzo
novel ...

Andrew

 

[wayne]

[re: switching from Windows to Linux]
It is all a matter of personal preference.

Not entirely. I'd happily switch to Linux if they had sufficient
*usable* native applications, like a graphics editor beside the Gimp
(which I loathe). Not everything runs under Wine or Cross-over Office.

Perhaps you should consider Adobe Photo shop version 7. Version CS also
runs pretty well too, but has some issues keyboard shortcuts and plugins.

I'm surprised you find Gimp so distasteful, but it is a different
interface and takes a little while to get used to.

Perhaps with the rise in popularity of linux, developers will begin
writing or porting existing application.

 

[wayne]

[...]

BTW, I think Mac is the clumsiest box I ever had to work with. I don't
get the zeal some people have for them at all.

Oh really? Funny, I do all my web development on one. having said that,
though, the Win version of Eudora is much the better so at work I keep
an XP lappy just for that.

And the Mac is not clumsy, either. I lost count of the number of times
under XP where it won't let me move a file, just because it's open. On
the Mac, you move a file elsewhere on a volume, the apps simply adjust
to the new reality. That's the OS working for me instead of the other
way around.

Perhaps Mac users should form an uneasy alliance with Linux users in
this malaware / virus debate Somebody once said 'the enemy of my
enemy is my friend'. I just hope I am not quoting that Mario Puzo
novel ...

Andrew

Seems like a logical conclusion to me, especially since both Mac OS and
linux are *nix. The earlier post about 0 known viruses for Mac also
applies to linux.

Seems *nix programmers are more careful about security the some
proprietary companies.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:33:55 GMT
Blinky the Shark scribed:

I'm low on life.

Life isn't important; self-awareness is. Just think how traumatic it would
be to die and still have to listen to all the bullshit surrounding us.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:08:06
GMT Bergamot scribed:

I hope you aren't implying that Macs are immune to attacks, because
that is patently false. Besides, a little prudence regarding AV is
simple common sense these days. I've been using MS stuff since before
Windows and have had exactly 1 virus in all that time, and that was
many years ago.

Ditto, and I did it purposefully as a test.

BTW, I think Mac is the clumsiest box I ever had to work with. I don't
get the zeal some people have for them at all.

Can't say I have any experience there but what I heard about them isn't too
compelling.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Not entirely. I'd happily switch to Linux if they had sufficient
*usable* native applications, like a graphics editor beside the Gimp
(which I loathe). Not everything runs under Wine or Cross-over Office.

For what it's worth, I use the GIMP on my Mac -- I don't know of any
reasonably priced alternatives of equivalent power.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.12-12mdksmp, up 24 days, 23:21.]

demiblog 0.2.0 Released
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2007/06/28/demiblog-0.2.0/