After 7 Years, MyDoom Worm Is Still Spreading 133
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Sophos have revealed that the MyDoom worm, which spread via email and launched denial-of-service attacks against websites belonging to SCO and Microsoft, is still spreading on the internet after more than seven years in existence. The firm suggests, tongue-in-cheek, that it would be nice if computer users updated their anti-virus software at least once every 5 years to combat the malware threat."
Re:Maybe people should have to register their PC (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll support that.
Right after we require a license to have children.
That would fix alot more stupid thanjust a computer worm problem.
Oh, I see! (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
The Definition of Ignorace. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this really any surprise to anyone? People still believe that Bill Gates is going to pay you for forwarding email. Most attacks (malware, trojans, viruses, etc.) feed on the ignorance of the average person. It's sad really, but I don't expect anything different 27 years later, much less 7.
Re:Virus checker bloat (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you drive carefully, what do you need safety belts and airbags for?
Re:XP Mode? (Score:4, Insightful)
XP versions before SP1 would get root'd by simply having internet access.
If I run a VM (XP or something else), that VM must have a different ip-address than the host, and to have internet access, there must be some kind of router or routing system. To reach the VM from the internet, port forwarding must be configured. Maybe the host IP is directly accessible from the outside, but the VM is not. Even if no firewalls are active, there is no way that the VM can be infected simply by starting it up and giving it internet access. So for an infection to occur, you need to start a browser to visit a website that infects the OS of the VM. (And of course the host could be infected, and then spread the virus to the local network, but that's something else.)
So can you explain how this VM will be infected after it started up without doing anything else on the machine?
Re:Windows is nothing if not backward-compatible (Score:2, Insightful)
Btrfs snapshots. Fedora already has support for automatic snapshotting with yum so that you can yum install or yum remove something and, hey, unintended change? Rollback.
Google for cgroups and isolation... there's a more specific term that will get you there immediately, but I can't think of it at the moment, as I've never used it, only read about it. It's basically a better, Linux-only chroot capability.
What the grandparent is trying to say about FTP vs. email is that FTP clients won't automatically execute the viruses they download (unlike Outlook.)