The Scam of the Century

[Guest metamarty]

Virusses may serve a purpose that's more important than anybody may understand. Ignorance is believing everything will be fine in your Microsoft world.

[Guest]

Same here...Except it was a few years later. The infection affected only a few floppies I'd used at the university (where they did NOT have up to date AV software).I run a background scanner continuously without affecting my machine at all (loadtimes of apps might be a bit slower, nothing else).

[Guest metamarty]

I'm speechless. This is beyond my comprehension. Please visit www.openbsd.org.

[Guest metamarty]

To elaborate,As much as people hate virusses, their writers, or even me for saying this, virusses have an important role in the world. They keep the pressure on people for updating their systems and they force IT personel to learn more about what's on their computers. As long as buggy software is being written, it is important to get it fixed, and that's what virusses are for. Imagine for a moment a child being brought up in an isolated enviroment without getting in contact with any virus. After 20 years, he is released into the world. He will probably be dead in less than a year. Now imagine the world being filled with windows computers, not having received a single security update for over 2 years because there was no need for it. Imagine what would happen when a single person strikes. It won't be far off the truth if I would speculate that he could make the entire high tech industry in the world come crashing down. That's why it's important that people keep getting focused on these issues.A virus is speeding ticket on the internet highway. Just play by the rules, and you'll be safe.

[Guest tgabriel]

I am sure you are just joking. There is no way you really believe such a statement as the one you placed in this thread.

[Guest emergency_pants]

I see where you're coming from, but I have to disagree.I mean... if people applied that way of thinking elsewhere, the world would be a very bad place in which to live. Conditioning children to hold lit fireworks, so their melted, stubby hands won't be so affected when they pick up a lit sparkler on November 5th. Being forced to eat other people's puke so that our stomachs are better conditioned to deal with attacks from human borne ingested diseases. Being conditioned to doses of radiation; having your hair fall out and boils evolve all over your body, just in case of a nuclear attack by terrorists.They're extreme cases of CONDITIONING but the same thing applies on all levels. Ever seen Clockwork Orange? There's no excuse for subjecting people to that crap. Don't try and justify antisocial behaviour as being deserved by the victim or for the good of the whole. The viewpoint put forward in support of perpetual online viral attack is nonsense, in my opinion. It can cost people alot of stress and businesses ALOT of money to put things straight after severe viral attacks.So maybe if I lose hours and hours of important work time to viral attacks at my workplace network, and it happens when I'm already terribly stressed already and when the IT manager is on holiday or elsewhere. And you sit there and tell me that it would be acceptable for me to work until midnight for a week to make up for lost time and to meet heavy deadlines!?Grrrr! at that, mate.Oh no... hang on... it would be all my own fault. I ask for it. I deserve it because I use Windows 2000 to run my 3DSMAx on. Oh... hang on... there is no 3DSMax for LINUX... mainly because it sucks and is impractical.Wake up, man. Solutions to potential attacks can be worked without real-world viral attacks. Imagine if human-borne viruses were introduced on purpose into the general population just to experiment! Just to keep people on their toes. It's a revolting thought. Even more revolting if the perpetrators were to turn around and say that it's the victims' fault for not wearing their mask at the right time. People responsible for creating viral software might want to think about that. Sick, eh?Simon.p.s. what's that crap about a virus being a speeding ticket on the superhightway!??? LMAO! No, mate. I tell you what it is... it's like driving happily along the highway, going to visit granny, and some 150mph f-wit comes careering over the central reservation and smashes your car to bits, killing your family and friends and leaving you in a bloody pool on the floor. Who's rules were they? Who had no right to be on that highway? Catch my drift?

[Guest Leesw]

>Software may contain bugs without compromising security.>All it takes is the right person at the right job and correct>development procedures to create software.Yeah right. The 'correct person' may be able to create software and infrastructure that he 'thinks' is secure, but then there are 10,000 weasles out there with twisted minds who can always find a way around it if they are motivated. You can't create products that are fexible and comfortable to use and contain invovative technologies without leaving some unforeseen avenue for attack. I remember when anyone could just walk into an airport up to a departure gate. Now they search, x-ray, and chemical sniff your bags, do random frisks, check your shoes, check your ID three times, and find a dozen other ways of making a trip to the airport an ordeal. Yet anyone can buy a 12 inch ceramic knife from a T.V. infomertial, tape it to their leg, and walk onto a plane with it. If you strip searched and flouroscoped everyone you might have a chance, but someone would swallow a time delay chemical grenade. Where there is twisted mind there is always a way around security.Few people have anything against UNIX clones like OpenBSD, and few people have experience with UNIX technology, so they seldom get attacked, but there are thousands of twisted weasles who hate MS and have experience with MS technologies, so MS products get regularly attacked. >The internet still exists and recovers from attacks because it>runs mainly on open source, community created software and>standards. These standards and protocols have been look at by>thousands of enthousiasts and are examined daily by people who are>interested in their functioning. If there are bugs, they will be>found and fixed.The formative years of the Internet were funded by the deep pockets of the U.S. military with the brain power of universities (like GPS). There are no commercial enterprises that would be so generous as to spend hundreds of millions creating such a giant technical system and then hand it over to the world to do with what it wanted. Even with all the backing it had to start with, the Internet still only became viable for the general public when corporations like Netscape, AOL, MS and Google made it user accessible with profit-motivated closed technologies.As to 'open source', that is a eutopian dream and like all eutopian dreams it will crumble. Soviet farmers struggled for the common good of the state against the imperialist enemy for a while but eventually they got tired of back-breaking work to support everyone else. The same will happen with Linux and other such products. There are hundreds of people working on it simply for the joy of putting another pin in Bill Gate's voodoo doll, but if Linux became the world dominant OS, how long do you think people would be donating their efforts for free to provide safe computing for giant billion dollar corporations?Besides that, Linux is just a clone of a 34 year old OS created by other giant 'money grubbing' closed-system corporations who already did the bullwork of security-proofing the OS decades before. Anyone can re-create the wheel, but I don't see any real innovation going on. Open source might be OK for fine tuning an aging technology, but it doesn't seem to produce revolutionary innovation. What for-profit corporation could ever thrive by spending millions in research and development then just opening their new technogies to the world? "Here, have all the source code for Windows XP, I'm sure you will work for free to improve it so we can sell even more copies and continue to make a return on our investment, but please, I'm begging you, don't use the technology in it to bootstrap your own competitive products". Yeah, that will happen. The day MS became 'open source' the weasles would exploit every tiny vulnerability and would drive them into oblivion.

[Guest tgabriel]

The most important thing you left out here is that Windows by default is not secure. Linux (UNIX) is by default secure. Just look at the permission structure the next time you create a file. Who has permission to use the file? Look at the default permissions in Linux (UNIX). who has permission to use the file?It is broader than that, however. You are of the opinion that open source is going to disappear because of the profit motive. Why don't you tell that to Red Hat and Mandrake? I am sure they would love for you to enlighten them.

[Guest Leesw]

Why don't you tell it to Corel, who staked their future on Linux and are now living in a cardboard box in an alley scavenging for food. If Red Hat, Mandrake, et al live and thrive for 25 years like MS then we will see.

[Guest Leesw]

>The most important thing you left out here is that Windows by>default is not secure. Linux (UNIX) is by default secure. Just>look at the permission structure the next time you create a>file. Who has permission to use the file? Look at the default>permissions in Linux (UNIX). who has permission to use the>file?Windows NT is by default secure, as are its enterprise level descendants. NT received the military C2 security level. That might not mean much if you bolt on a lot of other stuff and connect it to a network, but the same applies to UNIX and its clones.If you want to micro-manage file permissions and user/group profiles then get an enterprise level Windows OS where you can set owner/group/world permissions, but don't expect my wife to be able to deal with a UNIX file permission sequence like "drwxr-xr-x". That is what I mean that you can't make it simple for non-geeks, the majority of computer users, and still be NSA-level secure.

[Guest]

yes, it would be...I've researched security and by default *nixes do not fare well.The core products may be good, but they all install (unless you specifically tell them not to which most users won't know to do) a lot of extremely broken software and offer no warnings whatsoever (even though knowing it's broken).

[Guest]

He's most likely a virus author (or more likely a script kiddie) who wants to justify his crimes to himself by reasoning he's the saviour of society.One of the /. crowd who consider that to get people to move away from Microsoft anything is allowed (even while posting that message using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express on their pirated copies of Windows XP).

[MadDog 353]

Tim,Since the topic has been moved, your're probably not reading this; but I'll answer anyway.>Other than one piece of anecdotal evidence, do you have>anything to back up this sweeping generalization?If you've been awake for the past 6-7 years, it's pretty safe to say that AV software is a major cause of performance issues. The manuals for most graphic-intensive software that I've purchased in the last few years recommend that AV software be disabled prior to running the program. In user forums, if someone reports performance problems - the #1 suggestion is to disable AV software. Call it anecdotal; but from my own experiences using AV scanners - I feel pretty confident in making this "sweeping generalization." Do you have any evidence to the contrary?>Secondly, do you know of a site that reports PC software sales, or >were you guessing that AV stuff is at the top of the sales list? Uh, there are probably hundreds of sources where you could find a listing... personally, I rely on www.npdtechworld.com for an unbiased, up-to-date report. They don't keep a very extensive archive - but they're probably the best for current software sales... I usually drop by their site once a month. So to answer your question - No, I wasn't guessing.Regards,Marc

[Guest metamarty]

Your statement was true in the years before 1995. If you go to www.openbsd.org, you'll see that only 1 remote hole was found in the default install. Just as I'm typing this I see a window popup in my windows XP taskbar "new updates are ready to install". Seriously!!

[MadDog 353]

Hi Simon,I don't think you understood my point...Also... if you don't have AV software installed, how do you know you haven't been affected?Let me ask you the same thing... since you DO have AV software installed, what makes you so sure that you haven't been infected? Do you really trust your Anti-virus scanner that much?Regards,Marc