Conficker virus rant (boring) |
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iand4403
Registered User Joined: 05 February 2008 Location: Leeds Status: Offline Points: 626 |
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Without decent protection your PC could be part of a botnet (network of compromised computers which is controlled by it's creators) and you wouldn't be able to tell.
These networks are often used to hold a business at ransom, by overloading their servers with data from thousands of infected machines until they pay up. |
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chickenfizz
Young Croc Joined: 17 March 2008 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 982 |
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I have two answers to that...
I WOULD be able to tell because I'd see network traffic that was unaccounted for or I'd see extra processes running or many other tell-tale signs. The other answer is if I REALLY wouldn't be able to tell then I don't really care. And still I'd say that no I couldn't be part of one unless my computer had requested to be part of one. I agree that without decent protect there could be problems, but "decent protection" in my opinion is running a dedicated firewall and well-informed PC usage. Not downloading and installing patches and running bloated scanning software etc. |
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rezsbc
Registered User Joined: 21 November 2006 Location: Ireland Status: Offline Points: 352 |
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In response to the original post:
Leaving known security vulnerabilities in your installed software unpatched is just stupid. Hardware firewalls are good definitely, but a software firewall should always be used as well to control application-specific access to the network. Running without anti-virus is also just plain stupid in my book. I use all of these and my machine zips along. Windows in particular is really easy to mash up and end up with it running real slow.... probably 80% of the pc's I've ever seen crawl along through bad set up but patching your system/running antivirus/software firewalls should and do not cause a system to slow down massively. |
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odc04r
Old Croc Joined: 12 July 2006 Location: Sarfampton Status: Offline Points: 5483 |
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Application specific firewall and careful monitoring of active processes will actually tell you quite quickly. Back in the day the MSblaster worm got nothing from me as I simply denied it outbound access. Oh how I laughed as all my friends PCs constantly rebooted. |
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darkmatter
Old Croc Joined: 26 February 2005 Location: LDN Status: Offline Points: 2425 |
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Haha I bet they loved you for that Problem is, when people realize you know about these things, instead of taking your advice they just ask you to sort it out for them. I'd rather let them all get worms than spend ages trying to set people's computers up properly. |
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iand4403
Registered User Joined: 05 February 2008 Location: Leeds Status: Offline Points: 626 |
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Apparently it's quite simple to spoof the windows process list/netstat etc but I have no experience. As long as I can browse SP and play Moh:AA I'm not bothered either |
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nineleaves
Young Croc Joined: 31 August 2007 Status: Offline Points: 1327 |
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the solutions dead simple...
for internet use - JUST RUN LINUX ! ..preferably ubuntu. |
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tb_mike
Old Croc Joined: 01 October 2004 Location: New Zealand Status: Offline Points: 2744 |
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Yep if you have a rootkit your system will basically lie to you. Did you see what happened to our local botnet creator in the Coromandel? He has dyslexia or similar, so he doesnt go to jail,and has many job offers. Isnt that discrimination against those of us without conditions? Also he didnt modify an existing botnet program,he made his own :P And as for patching, yes some people DO have an excuse - for every 10 bugs that are fixed, 3 more are created. But your everyday joe blogs, I dont think they have a problem with auto updates aslong as they have a decent ADSL pipe. |
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Tony Wilkes
Old Croc Joined: 02 August 2004 Location: West Midlands Status: Offline Points: 4840 |
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For newbies try Linux Mint its a Ubuntu fork with a lot of the set up misery taken care of. Tony |
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odc04r
Old Croc Joined: 12 July 2006 Location: Sarfampton Status: Offline Points: 5483 |
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Just tell them it's £25 per hour after the first favour (unless they are good friends or family). That dissuades lazy people pretty quickly. After the first time you have sorted them out they don't get a second if good advice has been disregarded too! |
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nineleaves
Young Croc Joined: 31 August 2007 Status: Offline Points: 1327 |
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For newbies try Linux Mint its a Ubuntu fork with a lot of the set up misery taken care of. Tony [/QUOTE] ill have to look that one up sometime :) i currently reccomend and use ubuntu as it is also very windows user friendly; it works like it in many ways; is overall very easy to use & well supported. it was founded by some african billionaire who wanted to bring a free, useable, well funded & maintained opensource operating system to the masses who are familiar with windows. installs just as easily too; and the partitioning proceedure is easy & non buggy into the bargain :) |
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Tony Wilkes
Old Croc Joined: 02 August 2004 Location: West Midlands Status: Offline Points: 4840 |
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Basically Mint is Ubuntu with all the multimedia codecs already included plus they have modded a few apps. to make them much easier to use. Only available in 32bit at the moment but 64 bit is at RC1.
Tony |
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