Roger wrote:
Bill wrote on 29/02/2004 15:13:


In message , Roger Halstead
writes


I always wondered is any one ever fell for them.

They do, a perfectly sane and reasonable colleague of mine was very
pleased that Microsoft had taken the time to email him at work about
their new security patch. He opened it.


That is arguably neither sane nor reasonable.



I know a lady who fell for that one TWICE and then got insulted when
someone questioned her intelligence by having to explain all for a
second time less than a month later.

-Bill M

"Peter Gottlieb" wrote in message ...
Mydoom.F just got into one machine here which had McAfee running and fully
updated. McAfee then could not clean it. The free cleaner from Symantec
(Norton AV) did the job.

You can build up all sorts of defences, or you can switch over to Linux,
which I am strongly considering for this office.

Who sez that Linux is "bulletproof" in this context? In the extreme
assume that *everybody* switched to Linux: How long might you suppose
it would take for the spammers to bust Linux and go on doing "business
as usual"?

I'll give 'em ten minutes . . .

Brian w3rv



"Gary S." Idontwantspam@net wrote in message
...
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 17:01:23 +0000 (UTC), (Mike
Andrews) wrote:

In (rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors),
Cecil Moore wrote:
wrote:

dbjjvlhdbrpobcmbngkgdtxpoevsvbqgrocymgcgfswjqeknbn zxqlezzbvbydrbkwvttesckwdn
mwtcs

Just curious, does this string of letters have any meaning?

I suspect it's just a pseudorandomly-generated "hashbuster" to help
the spam avoid filters that hash the message body and check against
known spam.

Exactly. As spamfiltering has gotten better, the spammers have gotten
more sophisticated.

The key clue is the attachment. Besides EXE files, ANY files with the
extensions COM, BAT, SCR, and PIF could also be damaging programs.
Note that sometimes a file will have a name ending in more than one
extension, but only the last one matters. More trickery.

Do not open any attachments that you have the slightest suspicion of,
no matter who appears to have sent them. A friend could have a virus
on their machine, sending out copies to everyone in their address
book.

Get a good antivirus program, including Norton Antivirus or MacAfee,
which gets frequent updates of virus definitions, and run it on EVERY
file received, via email, Internet, or disk.

The time and money you should put into prevention are a tiny fraction
of what could be involved in recovering from a virus on your machine.

Happy trails,
Gary (net.yogi.bear)
------------------------------------------------
at the 51st percentile of ursine intelligence

Gary D. Schwartz, Needham, MA, USA
Please reply to: garyDOTschwartzATpoboxDOTcom

Brian Kelly wrote:

Who sez that Linux is "bulletproof" in this context? In the extreme
assume that *everybody* switched to Linux: How long might you suppose
it would take for the spammers to bust Linux and go on doing "business
as usual"?

Show me a Linux email client that executes binaries.

Michael


What has all this got to do with amateur radio?

In (rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors), Michael Hofmann wrote:
Brian Kelly wrote:

Who sez that Linux is "bulletproof" in this context? In the extreme
assume that *everybody* switched to Linux: How long might you suppose
it would take for the spammers to bust Linux and go on doing "business
as usual"?

Show me a Linux email client that executes binaries.

If books were designed by Microsoft, the Anarchist's Cookbook
would explode when you read it.
-- Mark W. Schumann

What has all this got to do with amateur radio?

Little or nothing, but it is pertinent to those folks who read this
newsgroup using Windows-based mail/newsreaders.

--
Take it from the staff of a five-cat house: A group of cats is a
"conceit." They'd like to be a "pride" but that would fool no one.
-- Morely Dotes, in nanae

"Michael Hofmann" wrote in message
...
What has all this got to do with amateur radio?


Cyberterrorism is a real concern. Should a Windows vulnerability be
exploited and take out significant numbers of systems, it would be an
advantage to have your station fully operational, including all digital
modes supported by your computer. So it has a lot to do with amateur radio
to have a robust computer.

Brian Kelly wrote:
"Peter Gottlieb" wrote in message ...
Mydoom.F just got into one machine here which had McAfee running and fully
updated. McAfee then could not clean it. The free cleaner from Symantec
(Norton AV) did the job.

You can build up all sorts of defences, or you can switch over to Linux,
which I am strongly considering for this office.

Who sez that Linux is "bulletproof" in this context? In the extreme
assume that *everybody* switched to Linux: How long might you suppose
it would take for the spammers to bust Linux and go on doing "business
as usual"?

It's not bulletproof at all, but it doesn't have severe design deficiencies
at least. They'll still keep finding buffer overrun problems in Linux, but
we won't be seeing the sort of boneheaded design flaws that Windows has.
The real problem is that the Windows issues aren't being fixed, they are just
being patched around and obscured.... and then the next virus comes along.
Until the fundamental problems get fixed, it's not going to get any better.
With Linux, at least there are routes to get that sort of problem fixed if it
should appear. I'm no Linux fan, but it's sure a big step up in terms of
unified design.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In (rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors), Scott Dorsey wrote:
Brian Kelly wrote:
"Peter Gottlieb" wrote in message ...
Mydoom.F just got into one machine here which had McAfee running and fully
updated. McAfee then could not clean it. The free cleaner from Symantec
(Norton AV) did the job.

You can build up all sorts of defences, or you can switch over to Linux,
which I am strongly considering for this office.

Who sez that Linux is "bulletproof" in this context? In the extreme
assume that *everybody* switched to Linux: How long might you suppose
it would take for the spammers to bust Linux and go on doing "business
as usual"?

It's not bulletproof at all, but it doesn't have severe design deficiencies
at least. They'll still keep finding buffer overrun problems in Linux, but
we won't be seeing the sort of boneheaded design flaws that Windows has.
The real problem is that the Windows issues aren't being fixed, they are just
being patched around and obscured.... and then the next virus comes along.
Until the fundamental problems get fixed, it's not going to get any better.
With Linux, at least there are routes to get that sort of problem fixed if it
should appear. I'm no Linux fan, but it's sure a big step up in terms of
unified design.

To which I'll add that the malware writers are reverse-engineering the
Wondows patches to see what the vulnerabilities are, and then writing
and disseminating exploits for those vulnerabilities, secure in the
knowledge that some large fraction of the Internet-connected Windows
machines around the world will be running unpatched Windows.

Open source is, IMHO, far preferable to that situation. I don't run
Linux at home, and at work we run AIX, FreeBSD or Linux (up-to-date)
on all machines exposed to the raw Internet.

--
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected
without, I thought, proper consideration.

(Stan Kelly-Bootle)