I remember back in the "good old days" (1995-1996) when the Internet was just starting to take off, the first thing guys wanted to see with their new dialup connection was "some flesh". Persiankitty.com seemed to be a popular choice back then, and from what I could tell there were no ill effects on the PCs themselves (I do not even want to get into the morality aspects of this matter). But, as time went on and on-line threats began to come into their own, I knew the easiest way for folks who wanted to intrude PCs would be found in porn, because pretty much every guy I have met that has a PC has hit a few such sites.
Once the Spyware and Adware threats emerged, along with Keyloggers and Hijackers, I knew the game was over for the "Good Guys". I began to block access to porn sites, on-line gaming, on-line social gathering spots and celebrity oriented sites. Just as David found by turning off embedded pictures in eMails, I saw a significant drop in the number of machine infections. About 2 years after that the AV software designers finally began to make some real headway with their ability to help prevent infections from these newer threats. But, even the best apps out there can't stop everything. Using FireFox seems to help also. When a machines does get infected I still find it is taking a blended approach to clean it up. I use no less than 5 different products to clean a PC up once it is infected. At that, if a PC has been imaged and/or backed up routinely, and it is going to take over 2 hours to clean it up (often does), I opt to restore from a pre-infection image and restore any data files from subsequent backups or strip the PC, rebuild it and restore the data files. I have all but decided to replace the XP OS on my primary communication PC (Office 2000 with Outlook) with a Linux OS just to eliminate the threats I run into. As well as I have protected my PCs and network, my biggest fear is picking up an infection and passing it to a client, family member or friend. I just hate having to change how I do things at my end to help ensure I do not cause problems for others. Shame I will never see Linux or Mac OS X replace Windows in the retail automobile dealership world. I am stuck with Windows, and all the bad things that come with it. Gil -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Smith Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 7:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [NF] Nice Virus Story For what it's worth, this sort of false-negative isn't just an ETrust issue. Over the past few months I've observed a new style of virus emerge that easily evades Norton, AVG and Trend products. Typically the payloads are keyloggers or browser hijackers, but there is something about how they emerge that seems to be a few steps ahead of the AV products. I've been able to combat this by turning off embedded pictures within our company email and using the firewall to restrict image searches. My suspicion is that they are being passed around with porn photos ( automotive dealer staff scoping out porn? Who would have thought? ). In any event, this approach seems to have worked as I haven't seen a new outbreak since. David Smith Systems Administrator Doan Family of Dealerships (585) 352-6600 ext.1730 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stephen Weeks Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 4:34 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [NF] Nice Virus Story Hi All, Its been a while since ive posted, but I have been lurking diligently :). The Group I work for has recently purchased ANOTHER company making 5 I have to develop for. Just 2 weeks ago we discovered that we were the proud owners of the Sality virus, or should I say viruses, we had more that one strain. The entire groups network had to be taken down and each server,desktop and laptop had to be scanned individualy, GRRREEAAAT FUN. Some of them had to have the hard disk reformatted and Windows re-installed as the virus was found to be re-spawning. I thought this would be worth a mention as Im sure some of you are saying "hummpphh, obviously didnt have virus protection"...WRONG...We did in fact deploy CA's Etrust virus scanner, which told me that for example my laptop was clean, we donwloaded a trial of Sophos and it happily told me I had 1400 infected files...hooorah. The moral of the story is If any of you are using ETrust, get rid of it. We are almost fully back up and running now, the doctor has reduced my medication and put me on a nerve tonic :) -- Stephen Weeks [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.fastmail.fm - The way an email service should be [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
