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View Full Version : bad guys winning in internet security ?


davidh
November 8th, 2005, 05:51 PM
root kits on sony multimedia cd's / dvd's ?
IM worms with root kits for Yahoo, AIM, MSN, etc.
holes in Flash, Quicktime
worms attacking Linux web servers
ad nauseam

sounds to me like the bad guys are pulling into the lead and the big name companies are helping the disasters arrive sooner with all the multimedia "enhancements", bells and whistles, seamless integration, etc.

is there any practical strategy to keep pace with this flood of mind numbing confusion at all ?

Or maybe just retreat to MS-DOS, OS/2, or shell accounts ? Even that probably won't work because ISP's could start requiring "approved" sercurity software be running on home PC's just to be allowed to log on to system, in not distant future. Software that would only run on Windows or Linux (and maybe Mac's)?

Yuk,

David H.

Dan in Saint Louis
November 8th, 2005, 07:13 PM
No, the bad guys aren't winning; but a lot of companies selling security software want you to be afraid -- very afraid.

There are potential holes, and then there are exploits observed "in the wild" -- actually implemented and annoying users.

davidh
November 8th, 2005, 07:52 PM
No, the bad guys aren't winning; but a lot of companies selling security software want you to be afraid -- very afraid.

There are potential holes, and then there are exploits observed "in the wild" -- actually implemented and annoying users.

Well, I don't necessarily expect the bad guys to "own the internet", but OTOH it's costing me more to have security. e.g. even tho' I use freeware AV, firewall, and spyware remover, still have to update AV and Spybot S&D almost every week if not more. Tolerable on highspeed but less so on dial up.

AFAIK IM worms (hole exploits) with root kits are now "in the wild" at low level, but a well designed and implemented worm could potentially turn at least a million PC's into zombies, totally automated infection with no user action reqquired, except having IM pgm on and running with default configuration, within less than one minute.

Bird flu and spyware, etc aren't going to destroy the world but seems like pandemics of some kind are more or less inevitable in both cases, so the question could be posed as how to reduce the damage, at a reasonable cost, if not avoid it.

David H.

Peter Creasey
November 8th, 2005, 07:59 PM
root kits on sony multimedia cd's / dvd's ?

David, Judging by the reaction I've seen on various sites on the web, I think that Sony's strategy might come back to haunt them.

People don't seem to appreciate Sony putting stuff on their PC without notifications OR PERMISSION.

ndebord
November 8th, 2005, 09:17 PM
No, the bad guys aren't winning; but a lot of companies selling security software want you to be afraid -- very afraid.

There are potential holes, and then there are exploits observed "in the wild" -- actually implemented and annoying users.

Dan,

A lot of the security required, imo, is common sense stuff. For instance, on my W98se laptop, I run IE-OFF, which turns off IE as the shell and active x among other things. I also run S&D with teatimer enabled. I run a firewall and AVG for anti-virus and when it comes to AOL AIM, I run 1.0.414...the earliest version of it I could find. it does not do all those fancy multimedia stuff, like images, files, VOIP, etc., etc. All it does is text chat and the only way it could be used to get a rootkit onto my computer would be IF I manually clicked on a link to take me to a malicious site, probably IRC.

Oh yes, I run K-Meleon and Firefox and if I must run IE, I run it with a decent secure shell, such as the freeware version of Netcaptor.