OT - Virus troubles (Mydoom)

David Hemmings wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

NOT WIV ME!!

mike r

Reply to
mike ring
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They will never be successful until they find a way to provide enough drivers for all the hardware out there.

Martin.

Reply to
Martin Bosticky

true, but it's effects would be very minimal indeed, also I doubt anyone would waste time writing a virus intended for such a machine :) It's like DEC VAXen - massively popular systems in the late 20th C but not virused because a) it was a multiuser system and b) the system kernel and its device drivers etc were protected from users. People tried to create worms like they're doing with linux, but they were quickly nipped in the bud.

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

Reply to
Witchy

There are several orders of magnitude difference between the virus problems with various MS Windows (and associated applications, such as Outlook), and those of any other OS. A long culture of 'gee whizz' feature bloat with no consideration to the security implications has been rife for years, which is why poor windows users suffer endemic virus problems, and/or have to buy and frequently update add-on products to plug loads (but never all) of the security holes the vendor designed in or crept in through security incompitence.

I'm pleased to say I can totally ignore the problem by not using MS Windows (at least, not on any system with access to the internet).

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Martin Bosticky wrote in news:opr2h7hsr2szjnnj@216.65.98.9:

I don't actually hate Linux, I got it working a bit, and online after buying an external modem....

Did you come across this...?

If Linux was a car...Sense of Humor required!

M: Hey Pete, Can you help me put a radio in my Debian? P: You're an Idiot, RTFM!

M: I need more help than that. P: You're an idiot! I did a Google search. It's in the page referenced by the footnote in the 37th hit. If I could find it, so can you.

GS: (Good Samaritan) you need to rebuild the engine to add a radio. M: Rebuild the engine? P: You're an idiot!

GS: There's a how-to. It's written for a "Hat", but it's mostly correct except that engine is in the rear. It's translated from German, but they did a pretty good job. It'll tell you to hook the radio to the red and black wires, but since you've got a Debian, there won't be any red and black wires. And you still need to write the radio driver. Don't forget to regrind the camshaft. If you don't, you'll get an error message that you don't have permission to change the tire pressure, but it's the camshaft. You'll need a lot of tools, but you can get them for free. Most of them come with instructions... about 900 pages in all. Read 'em all carefully and understand 'em before you start. Should be able to figure it all out in a couple of months.

[MUCH LATER...]

M: Hey Pete, I didn't get all the stuff I needed to rebuild my engine. Can I borrow your Drake again? P: The wife has the Drake, but you can borrow the Hat.

M: This is different. Where's the steering wheel? P: That dashboard was really using a lot of gas. This has what is called a CLI. Just type CTRL-L to go left and CTRL-R to go right.

M: What about the gas and brakes? P: That's all combined into a single speed number. Just type ps | grep speed. The headings are in Klingon, but the third number is the one you want. Just divide by the speed of light to get meters/second. You'll have to parse it out, calculate the new speed and use the nice function to change the priority of the process. That changes the speed. If you had just read the manpage, I wouldn't have had to tell you all that.

M: Which manpage?.... never mind... What if I need to stop in a hurry? P: Gotcha covered. There's a script for panic stops. Just type "PanicStop-3.8.63278665-HAT when=now". It will ask you for a password. Enter the password and hang on cause you're gonna stop real quick. I'm really proud of the deceleration optimization routine. Be careful typing, it's case sensitive. If it gives you a cryptic error message and doesn't stop, it's probably because you forgot to add yourself to the brakes group. It's all in the manpage.

M: Which manpage?.... never mind...

[MUCH, MUCH LATER....]

M: I wish I hadn't sold my Gates. At least I could drive it to town and pick up Granny.... P: You're an idiot!.....

Reply to
mike ring

My point being that you don't need to fiddle with the OS to catch a virus.

No compuyter can run entirely in ROM that has any sophistication - it needs at least data variables and probably a stack. That means some form of writeable memory.

If it is to run programs at all it needs to load them off a disk or flash memory, both of which can be corrupted.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

They are already successful in so doing. They are not targetig teh PC market, they are targeting the NT server market.

As Linux becomes popular drivers will be provided by hardware manufactureres who want their hardware to be bought. Its that simple.

The real problem is that the desktop apps don't exist.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Er, no, thety were not. The very first Internet worm was created for and succesfully brought down just about every VAX on the net.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

If it wasn`t for the backdoor payload, i`d strongly consider activating it on my own system just to have a dig as SCO for their position on linux :-p

Reply to
Colin Wilson

In message , mike ring writes

Did you write that all by yourself?

Reply to
geoff

In message , Sparks writes

see where the tiny url is pointing if they need to use it

Reply to
geoff

Now I'm no soap-box linux advocate - but that statement is just crazy. Have you actually tried installing a linux distro that's come out in the last couple of years? I can't remember the last time I had a driver issue with any stanard device.

Reply to
Grunff

geoff wrote in news:Vi5M$ snipped-for-privacy@ntlworld.com:

No, if I was clever enough for that, I could work linux!

mike r

Reply to
mike ring

Yes, but how many more were there?

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

Reply to
Witchy

But Linux is a multiuser system and its kernel and device drivers are protected from users... so what's the difference?

Reply to
Bob Eager

No, only every VAX running UNIX. Which was far from every one. The VAX commonly ran *either* UNIX (4.xBSD) or VMS - both were not affected.

Reply to
Bob Eager

This also fails, because the virus gets into the server before they discove its a virus. The first few hours, the virus gets in.

Rick

Reply to
Rick Dipper

A few IIRC. But in those days you had to have access to a vax to build one, and few vax admins were of the script kiddy psychology.

Its not JUST the vulnerabiity of PC's thatmakes them such tempting targets, its beacsue any asshole can buy one and download a D-I-Y virus kit from the net

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

None. As long as programs like Sendmail run with superuser privileges, they can be compromised.

The real difference is the Linux servers are put togeher by people with a little konwledge of how computers work and are harder to program vuirses for for the average script kid. That makes themn a harder target than a PC or NT server.

>
Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Are you sure? You may well be right. Umm. You are. I don't think there wer many VMS machines on the net then - in fact I am damned sure there weren't because DEC didn't have a TCP/IP stack for them - I used to be involved selling third part VMS TCP/IP some while before that worm appeared.

So there is the definitive answer. No viruses on VMS because it couldn't be (Inter) networked. DecNet was not an internet protocol..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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