Kama Sutra Virus warning

[Nicola McIntosh]

yep …just heard about it today, ive updated earlier on 😀

there is also another one which starts tomorrow and every frequent 3rd of every month….the ‘blackworm’ 😕

nik

[Peter Normington]

Seems like its caught by opening dirty mail.

No worries here

How did you go on Dave?

Peter

[David Rowland]

scanning 1st computer now (full scan)… bah
using Avast… not brilliant but it will have to do.

I am not expecting anything but I left it a bit late…

[Phill Fenton]

I’m not surprised Dave is worried about catching this virus (alll the dirty mail he reads) – but I am a little bit surprised at Nik 😕

[David Rowland]

more like the staff¬!

spam mail bothers me too… so far machine 1 is clear.
backing up server as we speak

[Phill Fenton]

Yeh yeh – blame the staff 🙄 :lol1: :lol1:

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Phill:

I’m not surprised Dave is worried about catching this virus (alll the dirty mail he reads) – but I am a little bit surprised at Nik 😕

flippin cheek phil…….i was talking about viruses in general….. 😮

nik

[Phill Fenton]

Oh bugger… The time set on my PC is wrong (set about 30 minutes fast) and I’ve just had my hard drive erased 😳

[Peter Normington]

Nik
I know dave will correct me if Im wrong, but a think Blackworm is a kama sutra variant. The little devil has several alias’s

Peter

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Phill:

Oh bugger… The time set on my PC is wrong (set about 30 minutes fast) and I’ve just had my hard drive erased 😳

domt worrie phil….i’ll phone alison and let her know she’ll sort it out eh!! 😉

nik

[Peter Normington]

Good thing you had the forsight to post just before it happened Phill 😀

Peter

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Peter Normington:

Nik
I know dave will correct me if Im wrong, but a think Blackworm is a kama sutra variant. The little devil has several alias’s

Peter

your probably right peter…i just never checked the posts in detail to find out…… 😀

nik

[David Rowland]

well i am still here … it is 00:02am

[Peter Normington]

Im not. off to bed

Cheers

Peter

[Hugh Potter]

lol, as it happens my lappy told me to do a scan today anways, 370,000 files later it tells me i’m clear, i knew that !!

i really do think that 99% of these ‘virus’ are in people heads, i mean, just look at the panic caused by this one, how many of you have suddenly done checks incase ? how many people worldwide ? a hoax virus will get as much attention / reaction these days as a real one !!

[Misko]

I am a big advocate of updating anti virus software regularly and using ad-aware and spy-bot for all the machines that are connected to Internet.

Yesterday I had to send one of my machines to “doc” to reformat the HD because of something that was most likely a virus. (I did not follow my on preaching)

I would normally clean it up myself but do not have time for it right now…

So, back-up your files regularly and keep your anti virus updated at all times

[David Rowland]

backups are critical… heard no reports today yet of anyone who might have had an issue.

[Phill Fenton]

I’ve got a theory….

I reckon the viruses are created by the companies that write the antivirus software. How else do they know how to defeat these pests. They keep on bringing out new viruses so we have to keep on buying updated antivirus software.

The idea first occured to them when the “millenium bug” scam was dreamed up and proved highly lucrative and succesful for all the software developers.

Then someone had the brainwave – if it can work for the millenium bug – why not invent another bug we can sell software to fix…… I know, we’ll call them viruses (-) And hence another industry was born 😀

[Marekdlux]

Is anybodys computer not working today? 😉
Anyone?
-Marek

[David Rowland]

yes the millenium bug was a big problem… but it was ‘heavily’ identified and steps taken, became a non-problem.

Viruses have slowed down over the years because I personally think that the internet has spread ‘virus checkers’ to almost everyone, you got so much choice now of what to download. I hardly hear a case of viruses problems like Boot sector viruses which used to be the issue, or files being deleted.

So, biggest issue today is hacking/spyware/dialers/browser hijacks, etc. Are these considered a ‘virus’?

Virus procting companies would employ top virus creators, that has happened as they are skilled, so why don’t they just become crooks? steal our money instead of breaking our computers, well see what virus products are for sale in PC World and there is your answer.
Spyware is the thing that bothers us now… but then there is products called “norton Internet Security” that has popup after popup appearing. All very well but when did I want popup appearing after popup? Firewalls are the answer and using a decent ISP with Spam filtering technology. The best backup is the true backup!

[Andrew Bennett]

Go to http://www.bitdefender.com
go to free downloads and get your machine checked

[Peter Normington]

quote Marekdlux:

Is anybodys computer not working today? 😉
Anyone?
-Marek

Marek you are as bad as Phill 😀
Can anyone who died recently, please raise their hand 😉
Peter

[Peter Normington]

quote Phill:

I’ve got a theory….

I reckon the viruses are created by the companies that write the antivirus software. How else do they know how to defeat these pests. They keep on bringing out new viruses so we have to keep on buying updated antivirus software.

The idea first occured to them when the “millenium bug” scam was dreamed up and proved highly lucrative and succesful for all the software developers.

Then someone had the brainwave – if it can work for the millenium bug – why not invent another bug we can sell software to fix…… I know, we’ll call them viruses (-) And hence another industry was born 😀

Hole in theory Phill. Viruses were around long before the millenium bug scare 😀

Peter

[Phill Fenton]

Drat and double drat. Foiled again by that pesky Peter :lol1: :lol1:

…Ok maybe it was the other way around. The computer virus scam was dreamed up first. Then someone had the idea, if it can work for a virus, why not dream up some other type of bug…

The Millenium was approaching and “hey Presto” the Millenium bug threat was born.

Seriously though, the first computer accountancy package I bought was in 1996. This ran under windows 3.1 (which was hardly short of memory) so no need to save two digits in the coding of this software. The millenium bug should only have affected software written in the 60’s and early seventies, yet it affected my accountancy program which was only 4 years old come the year 2000. I had to buy a new edition to continue running my accounts. This was no accident, this was deliberately engineered into the program (the “Millenium bug” was already a recognised problem in 1996 when my accounts package was still being developed).

The fact that this happened in a relatively inexpensive accountancy package leaves me in little doubt that the same thing was engineered into all sorts of other software packges under development in the mid 1990’s.

So if it can be shown to have happened once (the Millenium bug) – who’s to say that many computer viruses haven’t been produced to create a need to buy antivirus software.

Maybe I’m not so crazy after all *hair*

[Peter Normington]

Phill you have it in a nutshell,
dos was fine, then along came bill gates
he only wrote windows 3.xx because windows 1.x didnt work that well. but he did realise that some time in the future he would have to stitch up the holes in his operating system…but
Problem is how would goverments be able to keep an I on us if a system was secure? The Gov.com virus is very powerful, no one knows about it, but it has installed itself on every computer in the world, The CIA M16 etc are monitoring every word we type!! Shhhhhh…

Peter

[Phill Fenton]

No you’ve got it wrong Peter. Bill gates is one of the good guys. In fact he made his first fortune from DOS which he managed to sell to IBM to adopt as the operating system being used on the very first PC’s. Windows came along much later (Even early versions of DOS could handle the year 2000 and it was written before the Millennium bug was dreamed of).

And surely the “illuminati” are the ones responsible for the gov.com virus *hair*

[Peter Normington]

Phill,
I’m nearly always wrong, so nothing new there, unfortunately, leaders of goverments and multi-national-corporates, are also usually wrong.
but most people believe them anyway…..

Peter

[David Rowland]

how about this… in 1999 I was selling computers as a side-line in my local town… I remember buying a motherboard to build a computer (this was about July 1999) so I thought things would be fine…. when I got the computer up and running I ran the computer test software and ‘failed the year 2000 test’… u can imagine what I was thinking for a new board!.

Think the mil bug was down to the fact programmers used to take shortcuts with doing date calculations, they used the internal clock instead of doing it the right way, this is why Mil bug was a big issue.

Recently (very covered up and not as public as mil bug) we was going to have another problem… we was going to run out of IP numbers (each computer has an IP number when on the internet e.g. 65.34.13.43).

Does anyone remember the leap year bug after Mil Bug?

Mil bug was easy to get over, just turn your computer off over new years eve and switch on in 2000. It was the roll over that was the mathatical problem.

[Phill Fenton]

quote Dave Rowland:

Does anyone remember the leap year bug after Mil Bug?

Yes I seem to remember something about that – but it didn’t fool many people. Was there not also an “Easter Bunny bug”, and a “Father Christmas bug” which meant we would have to upgrade software twice a year every year 😕

[Shane Drew]

Hey Phill, your theory of virus companys writing viruses to promote their virus softaware is not new. When I was selling computers and software in the 80’s it was a common thought amongst sales guys. We had a software company here that became a multinational based on anti virus software technology. It struck us selling the software that these guys came out with anti virus stuff within days of a virus being ‘discovered’. I am still not convinced these companies don’t have inside info even now.

As far as the millenium bug goes, it did actually come down to sloppy programing. My sister and father wrote an invoicing program (SID – Small Industry Debtors) and a cashbook program (Electronic Casbook) for the vic20, c64 and Commodore DOS machines (pre windows) in the mid/late 70’s and our programers did not get caught at all, and that was over 25 years before it became an issue.

dave is right tho about the spam/trojan and the like.

What I can’t get over is how these spammers can’t be traced. I believe the technology must be there, but it is just not profitable for them to do it.

It is the same with mobile phones when they 1st came out. Every phone has a unique code. When it is stolen, the phone company could have made the unit unusable electronically. They didn’t because it was not in their interests. Thing is if they did take up the option, the mobile phones would have been less of a target.

Spamming is the same. If they can be shut down asap and fined, it would be less interesting for them to persue.