New virus

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This is very new. Just in case nobody knows about it.

 

Just another PC-hijacking bot. One goes, new one comes, and a good firewall saves the day. Plus common sense, of course.

 

That is, *IF* it auto-updates itself regularly.

That's why redundant security rules.

 

Why would a firewall need to update itself if it is good? Mine is soon 3 years old (ZA v4.5, 2003) and it hasn't let a single piece of malware in. Keeping ports closed can't be that difficult, you know.

 

That you know of...

 

The best firewall is a physical firewall. 10 feet (3m) of nothing but air between your CPU and the wall plug. I use this computer for nothing but Internet, now that I've got my laptop. There are plenty of cheap boxes out there that you can repeatedly sacrifice and wipe, while your main computer is safely separated.

 

Very true. You can't get hacked if you're not connected.

 

Of course you can get hacked without network access, with physical access the entire machine lies open...
Options are hiding a keylogger in your machine(open keyboard, insert keylogger, close keyboard), or just inserting an infected USB/CD/Floppy

 

With the current level of technological advancement, you can be hacked with no connection to the internet and no one touching your computer, even if it's not something one or other wannabie could do.

 

@chevalier:
No. There has to be some contact. It could be something as simple as the transfer of an infected file from one computer to another, but viruses and the like cannot simply appear on any random computer. There's always a cause, and complete isolation will protect you from everything. Of course, that precludes ever installing anything new, but . . . meh.

 

Nah, you can affect any electronic device with an appropriate choice of waves. Same way as A-bomb electrostatic blast will deal with the local electronics for good or a incoming portable phone call or message will cause your screen to flicker, you can use different sets of waves for different results. The easiest is to destroy the device or distort data transmission, but it should be possible to alter the streams of data flowing between various parts of a computer. Microsoft was planning to use this in its everlasting pirate hunt and I'm sure military intelligence techies have toyed with such things already.

 

The costs of such equipment are not worth the effects they cause. Only government or military would use such devices, and I don't ever intend to give them cause to use them on me.

 

You can, via Bluetooth.
Even this information is about cellphones, nowadays, most of PCs come with infra red and bluetooth.

 

I got a new wonderful worm this weekend. The same that knocked out CNN and some other big companies. Wonderful, seeing as my crappy anti-virus (Norton) couldnt find anything it ended with me wiping the entire harddrive and reinstalling windows. I am now on the lookout for drivers for my old soundcard and my graphics card. Fun fun.

 

@ joacqin

How did you get it? Unless, of course, you installed it yourself, in which case I fare you fun and long driver hunting.

 

I'm wondering how you got it too. The vast majority of virus' are aimed at corporations not individuals. You'd have to be pretty unfortunate to get a virus.

... spyware on the other hand is a different story, of course you have install it yourself.

But I'm wondering, has anyone ever been hacked by that ever elusive stranger on the net? I mean I could see being hacked by a friend as joke, but while it's technically possible to be hacked by a complete stranger, I've never heard of such a case.

 

There are kinds of spyware that install themselves. Of course, this still requires some kind of access that can be turned off if you really want but that sort of protection tends to kill the fun from surfing. Probably the best way to get rid of spyware is scanning the drive with AdAware.

 

I use linux to surf the net ... afaik there is no spyware for that. suppose there are tracking cookies and things like that, but I keep a tight lock down on cookies.

What you're talking about is spyware installe dthrough active X .. I'm pretty sure. There are probably other ways too no doubt, that's the main reason I don't even have IE on my windows box at all.

 

I didnt do anything, thats the annoying part. I never ever open any spam mail and absolutely not any mail attachments from anyone unless I expect them. I dont use any mail client but only different webmails thus not even having the mails anywhere near my computer. I havent surfed on any unsavory pornsites for ages nor had I used kazaa for months.

What I do is to browse pages such as SP, play world of warcraft and download the occasional torrent. Nowadays you can get viruses by simple being online and not doing anything "bad".

 

Sad but true. My dad works computer security at PSL (Physical Sciences Laboratory) and he's fending off packets left and right. I do a spyware sweep every time I log off, and I've gotten Trojan downloaders just surfing SP. Most of the time there's nothing, but every once in a while some enterprising b****** (who I know is not connected to SP in any way ) will try to get me.