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125 Comments
- arunforce, on 10/12/2007, -9/+59Ahaha! Good one! Norton Antivirus... Yeah right...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+41I'm pretty sure Norton does more harm, than good
- mgoddard, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35I always find it interesting how they calculate the total dollar amounts when speaking out worm and viral outbreaks.
- puggy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+311. User
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+32I remember the Michaelangelo virus as a kid and the local news telling people to unplug their computers power to prevent them from getting it.
Oddly enough, todays media isn't much more intelligent on advising what to do with PC threats.
Sumthins commin through our innernet tubes! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25Never say you have a secure computer...
It's like asking for it, my friend once announced on IRC that his PC was real secure, within a few minutes gay porn pictures were coming out of his printer. - Chronic, on 10/12/2007, -10/+30and as long as there are macs, there will be people who post in every single digg story that tell you your better off with one..
edit: it appears you have changed your post. *nods head in agreement* - mtlea, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Which reminds me... We haven't had a good, solid worldwide outbreak for quite a while now. We must be due pretty soon...
- sirmalloc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20They left off the virus written by Zero Cool - I hear it crashed 1507 systems in one day and caused a 7-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I've only encountered two viruses in my life. The STONED/II virus and the AIDS virus. Both were about 15+ years ago and both were by the wonderful people at Software Pipeline (aka Virus Pipeline). Man, if you rented software from a Software Pipeline store, you were almost certainly going to encounter more viruses than Courtney Love on a Saturday night.
- JoeCool1986, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11It most people's opinions (which no single person can voice of course), what's the best antivirus software out there? I have norton and never had problems, but are other brands known to be a lot better? And are these questions entirely inappropriate for a digg comment?
- simX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Posted by merreborn: "On a normal day, they make $2k in sales, and pay $1k in wages. Now, assume a virus makes the server unavailable for a day. At the very least, the company has lost $2k in sales, as well as some amount in wages, depending on who all gets sent home for the day."
Um, no. This is exactly the same kind of faulty reasoning that the RIAA uses to calculate "losses" to piracy. Just because your server was down for a day does not mean that you lost all the customers that would've made a sale that day. A large percentage (probably even a majority) would come back to your website or use your sales mechanisms the following day. They wouldn't just drop everything and find another alternative just because your central server is down. (Yes, there might be some customers who were considering two alternatives, and the fact that your server was down tipped them toward a competitor. But this would be a very small percentage.)
Similarly, just because people pirate music, doesn't necessarily mean that they would've bought the music had they not been able to pirate it. Piracy != lost sales. I'm NOT saying that piracy is RIGHT, I'm just saying that there is a HUGE difference between piracy and something like stealing, where a physical good is lost and so necessarily prevents another customer from acquiring that good.
Furthermore, if a company is so dependent upon its central server that the company grinds to a halt when the server isn't working, then that's just "rediculous". That company has a lot more to worry about than just losing $2K that day, if that's the case. Seriously, there are things called "backup servers", and they exist for a reason.
(And by the way, it's spelled "ridiculous". Use spell checking. It's ALSO there for a reason.) - YourTechSupport, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Because viruses are written to be as fast and efficient as possible and usually work on the first try.
- thegreatsam, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13It's also a little deceptive. We've had a few virus breakouts at work, but it's rarely the virus itself doing the damage, it usually the virus-scanner removing or deleting the infected file that does the damage.
- dankoleary, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10God, the MELISSA virus was horrible! I spent the better part of one summer removing that from people's machines. One computer had 20,000+ corrupted files on it.
- mgoddard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Stoned. I think every floppy disk I had at some point was infected by Stoned.
- thegreatsam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I thought the reason they told you to do that was to keep the computer off, as it was triggered by a date? Supposedly the painters birthday or something like that.
- drigz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9It wasn't a damage sorted list - notice how Blaster caused "2 to 10 billion dollars, hundreds of thousands of infected PCs" where Sasser caused "Tens of millions of dollars". It appears to be sorted by date.
- lonnieh, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12The more I hear people say that, the more I want to NOT buy a Mac.
- KiSA, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10why is it that the best software is free? I have never had a problem using AVG anti-virus compared to nightmares using Norton and other options.
Now that I rarely play PC games anymore, I am even thinking of switching to Linux since no one seems to shut up about it anyway.
also, just to add to the BUY A MAC list, after 1 week using my macbook, I really do hate my windows desktop by comparison - xXShadowstormXx, on 10/12/2007, -11/+18Macs OR Linuxs are not completely protected from viruses. I hope you know that.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8"I always find it interesting how they calculate the total dollar amounts when speaking out worm and viral outbreaks."
As rediculous as it seems, the numbers are based in reality. Consider, for example, a company in which everything runs off a central server. On a normal day, they make $2k in sales, and pay $1k in wages. Now, assume a virus makes the server unavailable for a day. At the very least, the company has lost $2k in sales, as well as some ammount in wages, depending on who all gets sent home for the day.
If you were the owner of this business, the losses would be very real to you. - jbestrom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Not that they are lazy just that they create sites to get you to put in you cc num for a 10 cent song. Then when the time is right they will hit. Just watch.
- Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The CIH worm was the worst, it destroyed my father's computer when he was trying to retrieve wedding pictures off the hard drive of a friends computer. What made it worse is that this happened about 6 months ago.
- BobMysterioso, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I had, and no doubt can probably find in my drawer a floppy with Friday the 13th on it. It was a boot sector virus from days gone past. In my experience - Sasser & CIH where the nasty ones. Sasser because it always rebooted you, and CIH because it would b0rk your drive and rewrite your FAT to read into the petabytes.
Everyone saying that a MAC/Linux is better is sort of skirting the issue. Security through obscurity is very easy to obtain. Know how many BeOS viruses I've had? None!
Buy BeOS - or VaxVMS, or get on ebay and get a NextCube. You'll be safe forever, granted, you won't have the apps you want. Sometimes you just have to use the evil Windows. Furthermore, if Linux had the market share that Windows does - there would be exploits. As many? I can't tell of course, but why spend your time writing an exploit when it isn't going to infect millions?
I will say, a Linux / Mac virus would get you a lot more attention these days. - mikewhite314, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5For a home PC, I don't really think it's neccessary to pay for anti-virus protection. Unless you visit a _ton_ of porn sites, or likely to be targeted, a free program like AVG or Avast! will do just fine
- Tebixan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I use Avast, its free for personal use, and I haven't had a problem with viruses since I installed it. I also use ZoneAlarm which is also free, between the two of them I have a pretty secure computer. As far as I know they only charge for business use.
- cmiz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7There are exploits for Mac though, I recall one that would run through Safari and cause a kernel panic. (I'm sure it's been fixed now, and I use Camino anyways.)
It's a lot harder to write viruses (virii?) for unix-like systems, but it's certainly not impossible. The lack of effort going into that field is mostly what has kept it safe so far. Also, it seems that open source software gets patched up at a faster rate than closed source. - Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Thanks to the picture of sasser, i now get the epic windows xp manuver YTMND
http://epicxp.ytmnd.com/ - dexOtaku, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Disclaimer: this is not intended as a flame.
There's another option to those 42 tray icons .. use some common sense in your computing habits.
I don't have any resident antispyware utils. I use Opera [for the majority] and common sense while browsing. The general rule is: take it from the source; if you trust the source of something, fine. If you don't, or can't find information on whether to trust it or not, don't.
My only current antivirus software is clamav. I scan the few things I download that are even remotely questionable with it, using it only on demand.
I do run a software firewall, which is the only security product I have running at all times.
My general rules are: *PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU'RE DOING*, take it from the source, verify sources, &c.
I'll add that for the majority of my own history of computer use, I've not used antivirus software. In 20+ years, I have never lost data to a virus, nor been hijacked by a worm, nor accidentally run a trojan. - unknamed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I thought weatherbug should have been on that list...... :(
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"On September 10, 2003, the virus deactivated itself and is no longer a threat. Microsoft has announced a $250,000 bounty for anyone who identifies Sobig.F's author, but to date, the perpetrator has not been caught".
get your gear people, we are going on a hunt. - npinski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Those viruses may have been the most destructive, but I have two to add to the list.
1) Most entertaining: The Anna Kournikova virus.
I was working as a developer when that baby hit big, and it was so hilarious to watch my inbox fill up with infected emails from people in my company showing that they opened it while I laughed at their stupidity. But the funniest part was seeing SEVERAL messages from some people meaning...drumroll...they clicked on it more than once.
It was a very simple virus. AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs. When you ran it, it infected the computer, and then scanned your Outlook address book and sent itself to everyone in it.
2) Most horrible to get rid of: I don't know the name.
Maybe this was a variant on the Blaster virus that I once got (and to this day i still have no idea how because i'm a programmer and am extremely smart about what I open and don't.) Here's what this virus did:
(i) created half a dozen "system-sounding" exes and placed them in your system32 directory. It ran them, and they took up >99% of your system resources making your machine essentially unusable.
(ii) It scanned the computer for email addresses and sent itself to those people BUT NOT FROM ME - from some of those other addresses. Like it would find Addr1, Addr2, Addr3, and sent itself to Addr1 from Addr2, to Addr2 from Addr3, etc. So people got viruses in the mail from someone who wasn't even infected so they couldn't even ask them what to do.
(iii) It killed task manager in under a second so the only way i could even determine that it did this was by taking a quick print-screen. It just shut task manager done
(iv) It disabled ALL the mainstream anti-virus tools like Norton and MacAfee - again - you'd start them up, and it would kill them
(v) It randomly placed itself in various directories so that even if you got rid fo the files in system32, it would run those other files and re-infect.
(vi) The damn icing on the damn cake: It PRE-PENDED itself to a dozen important executables - including explorer.exe, iexplorer.exe, msword, photoshop, notepad, netscape, etc etc. Which means that every time I ran any of these programs (including IE tryign to find information ABOUT this virus in symantec's library), i got re-infected.
Obviously I didn't know all of these things from the beginning. It took me several days, and maybe 14-15 hours of fighting this sumbitch to figure all this out. It was only after I downloaded some obscure lightweight anti-virus scanner that i realized the last part. and I still had to re-install windows because it pre-pended itself to so many cruicial system files. - altcountryman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It was amazing how many supposedly intelligent people in our company opened that Melissa file. Even more fun were the "reply to all" messages asking what it was, did anybody else get this, etc., etc. Good times.
- Recluse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I thought MyDoom was #1 as well ,considering as the article put it, "At its peak, slowed global Internet performance by 10 percent and Web load times by up to 50 percent." But the article was about the most destructive virii, so it was based on financial damage
- billybob476, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Double/treble?
Single/bass?
huh? - Kazrog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Mac OS X and Linux are simply more secure platforms. Yes, virii are always a possible threat, but nowhere is the threat more imminent and destructive than with Windows.
The are plenty of talented, motivated hackers out there trying to write viruses, worms, trojans, etc. for Mac OS X and Linux, and none of them have ever succeeded. OS X and Linux are far from "obscure" and have a much larger market share than BeOS/Zeta, etc. When you look at the installed user base of OS X and Linux in terms of machines connected to the internet, the market share approaches the 15% range, which is far from obscure. - jbestrom, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Oh so true.
- YourTechSupport, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Firefox + AVG + Hardwall + Common Sense = Happy Computer
- lordcat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I was disappointed by the complete lack of 'old school' viruses... While this list does contain a nice list of 'disruptive' viruses, they aren't all that 'destructive'... At best, some corrupt files, a DDOS and maybe a corrupt bios...
I was expecting to see something more along the lines of... oh... say... that old apple virus that would blow the CRT by rapidly changing the refresh rate/resolution... or maybe a virus that caused some equipment to go haywire and do some actual damage... - Triffid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"There's another option to those 42 tray icons .. use some common sense in your computing habits. "
Ya, try telling you boss that instead of putting a crap load of anti-virus software on your users computers... you just told them to use common sense ;)
I'm not sure you'll have that job for very long - databasecowboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Blaster didn't require you to open anything. It relied on the default setting of open ports used for administrative purposes. The subsequently released patch closed those ports by default.
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2003-08-11 - KillerX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Microsoft Windows is THE Virus!
- GlassCasket, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@JoeCool1986:
Just because you have to pay an arm and a leg for an anti-virus software, dosen't mean it's good. There have been several tests done with commercial and free anti-virus' that show that the free one can do as good a job if not better. :)
I'd recommend AVG or Kaspersky. - cam18, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Cool. What I am going to need?
- mookieXL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+299%
- ZoomBoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I remember shutting that sasser virus down on so many computers
lsass.exe -a - g00ch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh man, I remember CIH...
I was doing network administration at my highschool when it hit (this was back in 99 youngins). I remember having to scan every system on the network during the 2 days before the virus activated itself. Even then, it still managed to find its way back into the network and we ended up losing at least 25 systems (on a network of about 150).
Mmm... MBR wiped and if the BIOS was flashable, you had a motherboard sized paperweight. Thankfully most of the systems we were using were carbon copies of one another and we brought a few back to life with either a quick replacement of the board from one of the junked units we had lying around, or if that was toast, its bios chip.
I'm pretty sure that a friend of mine at the time who had a habit of downloading warez and then bringing them to school had a large hand in the spreading of that damn thing.
I'll say one good thing for CIH though, afterwards all the computers were kept regularly updated with antivirus defs. - joshness, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I'm curious what the top destructive viruses were before the internet became so prolific. A time where the spread of viruses was commonly done through diskettes. I remember our computer being infected by The Monkey Virus in the early 90's. (http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/monkey.shtml for description).
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