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(continued from previous page)
recent editions of Windows are available, but Windows 2000 remains popular. The operating system ran on 48 percent of business PCs during the first quarter of 2005, according to a recent study by AssetMetrix.
The onslaught of worms based on the plug-and-play flaw appeared less than a week after Microsoft's patch release, leaving users very little time to protect their systems.
Many Windows 2000 users likely will not have patched yet since they need time to test the fixes before installing them, Ullrich said.
Although there are several worms that exploit the Windows plug-and-play flaw, the spread remains limited, Cole said. "We are not seeing any one of these really soaring or escalating to something like a Blaster or Slammer," he said. Symantec has elevated its ThreatCon rating from one to two, with five being the highest.
Trend Micro has rated the worm attack "yellow," which is in the middle of its alert range. The security company has seen thousands of infections from Zotob alone, Hartmann said.
Infected machines can be cleaned up using tools available from antivirus software makers, including Symantec. Windows 2000 users who have not patched, should do so, Microsoft urges.
CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.
See more CNET content tagged:
Zotob worm, David Cole, worm, Microsoft Windows 2000, variant
and computers to Dells within the last couple of days! What timing.
Again, CNN should be Embarrassed!
not some nebulous debate in a nerdy forum.
If only FOX News had broadcast the issue live. With their larger
and much smarter audience (I mean that seriously, CNN is a
joke) Microsoft would never sell another copy of their crummy,
broken down OS.
O' Glorious Day!
I guess you would see them as smarter if your a right winger. CNN is right wing too.
Stop drooling and scratching your head, open up your eyes and learn about that which controls much of your life. Hopefully your raining ignorance does not destroy anything important in the mean time.
"ignorant masses" because the lowly cattle are not smart to
manage their computer systems.
You know, many of these poor folks that you have such distain
for have jobs, families, you know, real lives. They don't have the
time to invest in PCs like lonely geeks do. Balding saps sitting
under a dim 40 watt bulb in your tattered underwear, playing
Doom all day long, and going through bags of Cheetos.
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps we should be feeling sorry
for you? Investing all your time and energy in a failed operating
system? Think different, Tron. Go outside and play. You're
looking awfully pale and the human race needs you.
Only an idiot would activate Automatic Updates, on a Windows machine, on a corporate network (unless the updates are being pulled from a company controlled, local Windows Update server [after an intense, possibly long, period of testing]).
Thanks for playing. Try again.
by the minute, reports about Windows with its high-tech
(insecure) bundling of Internet Explorer into the OS, and how it
has made eveyone pay for Microsofts greed. If they cant beat a
company like Netscape with good technology methods, then lets
screw our customers, since they dont know better anyway, and
mash the browser into the OS and let 'em fight for themselves. If
you keep buying into the next marketing ploy, or promise, of a
secure Microsoft system, you will keep fixing your PC jalopy,
while Bill Gates laughs all the way to the bank.
What can you do, you might ask? Perhaps buy a Mac, or build a
Linux PC, after all what is your time worth in life, if you can
avoid these constant (never ending) hassles with a troubled
Microsoft design that will keep milking you for life. With no end
in sight, get used to it, or get out of Windows. Now you know.
loss of data."
All of the worms exploit a security hole in the plug-and-play feature in the Windows 2000 operating system.
Microsoft needs to release a patch that turns on automatic updates permanently if it sees the computer hasnt been updated in over a month.
WRITING CRUMMY, SLOPPY, CODE.
That would solve everything.
Ooops. Just remembered. I have a firewall. Back to work.
Again, CNN should be Embarrassed!
" ...but Windows 2000 remains popular. The operating system
ran on ***48 percent*** of business PCs during the first quarter
of 2005, according to a recent study by AssetMetrix."
Also it was CNN, New York Times, and ABC network that are
mentioned in the articel alone. How many more do you think
there are? Hint: There are still millions of W2k machines out
there, and these are typically not upated vigorously.
CNN was reporting LIVE giving quotes from Microsoft
representatives who claimed it was "low level". Do you think
these companies and others think it was "low level"?? MS means
its "low market share" so they can tell them to screw. Air time
costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions per minute of
broadcast time.
every night is beyond me. These "critical" situations are affecting
people's lives in dramatic ways... oh, wait...
Fortuantely, it mostly IT wonks and MS apologists that are staying
up late securing these OS dinosaurs. Serves 'em right.
Is there better hardware support then there was in these OS?s then there used to be yet? Then they might be worth considering, but probably not since I still couldn?t get half the apps I use to run on them.
nasty windoze thang.
Who knows????? ;-)
Have you ever read the book "Jennifer Government" by Max Berry? The book (it's fiction) touches on the extent of corporate espionage and it's quite cleverly written. Although, in the book, Nike kills a few people to increase the value of some shoes. While not DIRECTLY correlated (yet!), it has a similar feel to it.
than you are", are being hit by this worm hard.
I guess I should serve them some humble pie. Perhaps their IT
groups could bring cutlery and juice.
As to the myth that the virus and worm writers target Windows because everyone uses it....thats BS! Viruses and worms are all about reputation in that world...no one gets paid to write a worm. The first person to write a sucessful Linux, Unix, or Mac virus would be famous. It has nothing to do with market share. If there was only one Ferrari in NYC, do you think it wouldn't get stolen because of market share? Viruses and worms don't exist for Linux, Unix, and Macs because they are all based on operating systems that were designed from the beginning not to allow them.
"As to the myth that the virus and worm writers target Windows because everyone uses it....thats BS!"
"The first person to write a sucessful Linux, Unix, or Mac virus would be famous"...
"Viruses and worms don't exist for Linux, Unix, and Macs because they are all based on operating systems that were designed from the beginning not to allow them"...
Pardon me, but, using Peter's words, "thats BS!" - I mean, the myth that Linux, Unix, or Mac are inherently virus-free, and Windows is the sole vulnerable OS.
Here is just a couple of links for you - go and get some protection:
Virus protection for MAC OS:
http://www.symantec.com/nav/nav_mac/
... and for Linux:
http://www.centralcommand.com/linux_server.html
Deleting one file in safe mode fixes the problem.
The so-called patch does nothing to stop this worm, the only protection is to
1/turn off port 445 to stop it spreading to other computers,
2/delete the mousemb.exe file from system32
3/remove the two reg edits it makes (although these appear to be harmless, in fact they might even make your computer more secure)
4/Anti-virus software - it's the only thing that can prevent re-infection, as I said, the M$ patch does nothing. Patched machines are just as likely to be infected as those not patched.
What happened here is that some "expert" advised a CNN "reporter" to watch for suspicious activity, such as your PC rebooting - probably because this "expert" remembers a worm from about two years ago that did this.
This turned into the "worm reboots computers" - which spread like wildfire across cable news channels (pretty much the same thing as your average tabloid paper, but on TV - think Fox News, MSNBC, CNN - all do nothing except commentate on life, making up hysterical BS to make it appear more interesting).
just one, should be easy right?
otherwise don't spread your ignorance
"Name one 'innovation' in longhorn that doesn't already exist elsewhere"
http://news.com.com/5208-1016-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=8183&messageID=57023&start=83
...and I gave two, yet you are still spouting the same anti-Microsoft garbage. You are not here to learn, you are here to lecture.
The fact is I have Win2K and broadband and I have not got this virus. Seems as overrated to me as UNIX virus, which do exist and you know it.
The VERY FIRST worm. It was Unix based and spead from Unix system to Unix system causing a great deal of damage to the internet. In fact by percentages of internet systems infected, it was the most effective worm ever.
Don't make challenges based on your own ignorance.
capturing & dragging suspected terrorists from the caves, they
frequently find their MS Windows PC laptops & search for
terrorist activity on the hard drives? Coinsidence? Hugh amounts
of money & they use MS PC Windows laptops?
US DOJ had their chance & they agreed that Microsith is an illegal
monopoly, but refused to break the monopoly apart or control
their illegal activities worldwide. MS Monopoly money goes very
deep into the pockets of the U.S. Government in Washington
D.C.
U.S. Gov't has suggested that MS should be considered for a
national ID card for all citizens & immigrants of the USA, as part
of their homeland security defense. Citizen Gates with the Dept.
of Homeland Security would "manage" all important data of all
citizens.
U.S. Gov't has recently suggested that MS Internet Explorer be
the ONLY Internet Browser of the Government. MS-OS control
battleships & aircraft carrier computers.
But noooooooooo, the terriorist wouldn't think of taking
advantage of the structural weaknesses of the US-MS software
that is on the governments computers, the US military
computers, the US airports computers, the banking +
investment computers & the majority of the US citizens
computers. Why would they want to do that...?
WAKE UP PEOPLE!
These worldwide cyber attacks are not just some smart punk
kids having a laugh. These attacks are effecting millions of
businesses & costing them BILLIONS of dollars. These "phishing"
scams through IE Outlook are ripping off money from innocent
people & growing identity theft is a major problem.
Don't make it easy for criminals / terrorists by using faulty
software full of security holes that Citizen Gates can't plug fast
enough.
Really. Thanks.
Every Win2K PC we have has been infected, it wasn't until after we removed a certain file that even the anti-virus software would delete or quarantine any of the subsequent attacks.
Our WinXP and Server 2003 boxes have been completely unaffected by any of the worms - mostly because we have patch management software that can patch hundreds of networked computers instantly - without any kind of manual installation.
If we'd had to rely on automatic updates we'd have been screwed - because in a business environment you don't give normal users admin rights, therefore automatic updates won't work until an administrator logs on.
I don't know how any medium or large sized business can cope with keeping on top of patches without software that can remotely patch at least a 100 workstations at a time.
We don't even have to do a manual install of the patch management software (which the crap patch management packages force you to do on every workstation). All we have to do is scan for a new PC on any domain then apply the patches and remotely reboot it.
UpdateExpert has prevented every worm except w32.esbot from causing us any problems, and that only failed because there isn't a patch out there that prevents it from installing on Win2K PCs.
- Microsoft WGA = terrorist threat
- by W2Kuser August 17, 2005 2:22 PM PDT
- The real story here is that Microsoft's new WGA policy of BLOCKING critical security updates of computers that are not verified as "genuine windows".
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- From the MSFT website
- by August 18, 2005 9:54 AM PDT
- Q:Do security updates require validation?
- Like this View all 2 replies
Processing -
Showing 1 of 2 pages (105 Comments)By intentionally blocking these critical security updates, Microsoft is now openly supporting not only annoying hackers, but also the more serious cyber-terrorism threats.
Forget Iran or Korea, Microsoft now poses a more serious, immediate threat to this country's security...
A: Security updates are not part of WGA. Security updates can be installed using the Windows XP Automatic Updates feature, or downloaded from the Download Center.
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/FAQ.aspx?displaylang=en
Do your homework before you make ASSumptions and flame
MSFT has said all along the using the WGA is NOT a requriement to receive security updates, for the very reason you mention above. They would rather patch pirated versions than have them become infected.