abcnews.go.com— Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.
Nov 9, 2009View in Crawl 4
The issue is not the OS. The job of an OS is to execute commands, that's it. Antivirus looks at those commands and asks: Is this what a normal user would do?I could give you a CD-ROM with a game demo on it. Included in that game demo could be a script to download gigs of pirated movies and then lease them back out.The OS (and all OSs for that matter) just go "Yes sir, move data from Point A to Point B then out to C-ZZZ". Anti-virus looks at it and says "Wait a minute... this looks like a command known to us as a virus, and we're going to stop it."You can do it on any OS, even linux, through social engineering.
This is another reason I say we should worry about smarter terrorists like the 911 or higher kinds and forget about the hillbilly kinds in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, etc. If smart terrorists planted enough of this on US computers the police may need to get the military involved against our own citizens. I don't think our country could handle such a thing with a cool head.
Have you ever disabled Autorun on Windows? It is a serious PITA on the one I disabled it on. I wanted to be one of the people whose computer it didn't infect and omg you can so easily tell that Microsoft didn't want you to disable autorun. Had to go to like 2-3 places in the system to do it and I think I had to download a patch (manually) from Microsoft's support web site.Whoever thought that feature up needs to be asked by a group of 2,000,000 for about 10 minutes each, why they thought that was a good idea.That and.... automatically using IE (aiyeeee!) to fully automatically render folder on anything I look at - web drive, USB thumb drive, CD-ROM I don't know what is one (which is why I am LOOKING at it!).There should be an iPhone app for making computer OS design decisions that is free to residents of Washington state.
Guess I'll be downloading geriatric porn from now on. Oh, and my midget porn collection has got to go.I bet if you were to search 99% of digg users' computers, you'd find something somewhere that was questionable. A cache file, old thumbnail, previously deleted file, whatever. Even if they are a day away from their 18th birthday, it is still considered child porn. If I go to an "18 year old sluts" site and download images (or not, it's just in my cache from being redirected there), what if it is found later that one of the "stars" was underage, or what if one of the stars just LOOKS underage? Am I still guilty of possession of child porn? There should be age brackets like there are on underage sex. Someone looking at a naked 17 year old is quite a bit different than someone watching graphic sexual abuse of a 5 year old, but the charge is still the same and carries the same penalties.Possession of child porn is a serious offense that carries life-long consequences, even if you are ultimately acquitted. It should be subject to the same due process as any crime, not treated like the modern-day witch hunt that it is.
phantomsranchNov 9, 2009
terrifying
gusterbearNov 10, 2009
Buried for basic IT knowledge failure. Viruses can hit any computer system if coded to that OS.
gusterbearNov 10, 2009
That's why you should wear a condom.Oh wait, we're talking computers./s
gusterbearNov 10, 2009
The issue is not the OS. The job of an OS is to execute commands, that's it. Antivirus looks at those commands and asks: Is this what a normal user would do?I could give you a CD-ROM with a game demo on it. Included in that game demo could be a script to download gigs of pirated movies and then lease them back out.The OS (and all OSs for that matter) just go "Yes sir, move data from Point A to Point B then out to C-ZZZ". Anti-virus looks at it and says "Wait a minute... this looks like a command known to us as a virus, and we're going to stop it."You can do it on any OS, even linux, through social engineering.
Closed AccountNov 10, 2009
This is another reason I say we should worry about smarter terrorists like the 911 or higher kinds and forget about the hillbilly kinds in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, etc. If smart terrorists planted enough of this on US computers the police may need to get the military involved against our own citizens. I don't think our country could handle such a thing with a cool head.
johnnysoftwareNov 10, 2009
Framed for kiddie pr@n? There's an .EXE for that! >.<
johnnysoftwareNov 11, 2009
Have you ever disabled Autorun on Windows? It is a serious PITA on the one I disabled it on. I wanted to be one of the people whose computer it didn't infect and omg you can so easily tell that Microsoft didn't want you to disable autorun. Had to go to like 2-3 places in the system to do it and I think I had to download a patch (manually) from Microsoft's support web site.Whoever thought that feature up needs to be asked by a group of 2,000,000 for about 10 minutes each, why they thought that was a good idea.That and.... automatically using IE (aiyeeee!) to fully automatically render folder on anything I look at - web drive, USB thumb drive, CD-ROM I don't know what is one (which is why I am LOOKING at it!).There should be an iPhone app for making computer OS design decisions that is free to residents of Washington state.
bylethNov 15, 2009
Guess I'll be downloading geriatric porn from now on. Oh, and my midget porn collection has got to go.I bet if you were to search 99% of digg users' computers, you'd find something somewhere that was questionable. A cache file, old thumbnail, previously deleted file, whatever. Even if they are a day away from their 18th birthday, it is still considered child porn. If I go to an "18 year old sluts" site and download images (or not, it's just in my cache from being redirected there), what if it is found later that one of the "stars" was underage, or what if one of the stars just LOOKS underage? Am I still guilty of possession of child porn? There should be age brackets like there are on underage sex. Someone looking at a naked 17 year old is quite a bit different than someone watching graphic sexual abuse of a 5 year old, but the charge is still the same and carries the same penalties.Possession of child porn is a serious offense that carries life-long consequences, even if you are ultimately acquitted. It should be subject to the same due process as any crime, not treated like the modern-day witch hunt that it is.