All Posts by Paul

More Information on the downadup Worm

Paul

If your working to get rid of this Downadup Worm, F-secure is giving out a free removal tool to help with that task.   According to F-Secure Worm:W32/Downadup.gen description which Talks about how bad this worm is.

[ad#ad2-right]Due to companies not updating the MS 08-067 patch, it is the primary way for this worm to get onto a system.

Graham Cluely’s Blog ask a question and got quite a few answers from the users. The results of the poll are 53% believe the hackers are to blame, and 30% think the System Administrators are to blame, and 17% think Microsoft is to blame for this worm.

I have a mix feelings over who is to be blamed for this worm. I think the person who wrote this, did it for a specific reason. We can’t expect any software we use to be 100% safe, even Macintosh are not 100% safe. Microsoft isn’t to be blamed because they tried to patch this as quickly as they could. I know that companies have a hard time keeping up with Microsoft updates, and they really can’t be blamed. I think Hackers are always going to make a virus just because they can. That’s in there nature and we will never be really rid of the virus or worm writers. They are in it for the Money, to boast, to take control of, or steal sensitive information. Windows being the Alpha Dog, people are always going to test the waters because of that.

So who do you think is to be blamed?  I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

Who do you think is to blame for the Downadup Worm?

1) End Users
2) Microsoft who did patch it
3) The person who Wrote this Worm
4) Companies who didn’t implement updates
5) No one it is going to happen
6) People who pay the writers of Virus/Worms

View Results

Make your own poll

If you think someone else is to be blamed just make a comment.

Please bear in mind that this poll is not scientific and is provided for information purposes only. The comments expressed on this page are those of a subsection of poll participants, and not necessarily those of Tech-linkblog. Tech-linkblog makes no guarantees about the accuracy of the results other than that they reflect the choices of the users who participated.

Barack Obama isn’t leaving the White House!

Paul

In a story from Sophos, some e-mails are going around saying that Barack Obama is not going to be president or that he will not be inauguration.   Sopho’s also makes a great comparison for the two sites and it does try to look like the official site.

obama-fake-blog

[ad#ad2-right]

Which if you click on the “Continue Reading” link it will try to send a file “Speech.exe” which is W32/Waled-Gen or Mal/WaledPak-A.   It is a fake site to look like the real site, it is never a good idea on clicking on links that looks real. For those of you who want to watch the Inauguration online I would suggest Hulu:

You can watch it happen when it happens. So sit back relax and enjoy the show!!

How Serious is the Downadup.b/Conflicker Worm?

Paul

In there latest post F-secure has updated how many people are infect and I’ll quote:

Today’s calculation is a total of 8,976,038 infections worldwide and 353,495 unique IP addresses.

That’s a quite a big difference compared to our last number — there will be a follow up post coming soon to explain the methodology.

[Via F-secure]

F-secure has noticed it went up from 3,521,230 infections worldwide. This Worm has doubled in over a day.  So I have done some twitter searching to see if anyone has recently tweeted about this and I find this one comment:
[ad#ad2-right]

WTF? suddenly my antivirus is popping with warnings about a W32.Downadup.B … but I havent received any attachs or installed anything!

[Via Twitter Mklopez]

I’d thought I show you how important it is for you to get ready for a very hard fight ahead of yourselves.  You see this hasn’t even begun with this worm.

Here’s are some of the tweets:

2 customers, have this conflicker.worm problem and we are trying every possible solution but nothing turned out to be solved

[Via Twitter  Candegger]

@carnal0wnage Hey happy new year, what malware one of my clients just had a large outbreak of the conflicker virus, pretty good virus

[Via twitter MarcoFigueroa]

[ad#ad2-right]This worm doesn’t need to be downloaded because it will use exploits that are currently unpatched in the systems .  This worm seems to be spreading by USB sticks and you should really turn that off. If you think you’ve gotten this virus, please check out my Malware Resources and also some of the other post about this worm:

I hope these resources help you fight that worm and help people get your system back to normal.

Check out my other Posts about Conflicker/Downadup Worm.

Does Apple’s Steve Jobs Have HIV?

Paul

After a sudden announcement that he was taking a leave of absence from Apple due to all the controversy of his health?  We must ask our selves why?   I came across a website with a picture of Steve Jobs results about having HIV.   I must ask Is this likely?

With any operation, There is a chance of?

As you know when you have an operation you have a chance of dieing, of blood transfusion, of complication from the surgery, or a multitude of possible outcomes.  We don’t know happen during surgery for Pancreatic Cancer and he probably had blood transfusion also.  So what did happen during the surgery?  That is a very good question.

We know he wrote a letter to all the employees of Apple:
team ,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve
That comes from Apple web site Wednesday and I have some questions to ask?

He says “He learned that my health-related issues are more complex than originally thought.”   So I have to wonder if he just learned that he has HIV?  This is what will have to be addressed sooner or later.   Anyone want to ask the question to Steve Jobs?  I’ll let you decide if it is true or not but it does bring up some very interesting questions, like will he return in June or will he Retire?  I just have all these questions.

Update

I came across this site claiming it has been circulating in emails about this HIV status.  They also claim this is false, I do not know if it is true or false.   I don’t think Steve is being totally honest with the Apple community and would like him to be truthful to everyone.   I think the only way Steve is going to stop this is to release his records to the public.   I don’t know if he actually has  HIV.  I don’t have any good contacts to tell me one way or the other but I do know that anything is possible in this day and time.

I don’t know if this is fake but Only time will tell. If you want to comment please go ahead and discuss this!!

Admins are shaking in there boots due to the Ms 09-001 Patch

Paul

I have to talk about this because this is a big deal.   According to Techworld and I’ll quote:

“This one scares me – a lot,” says Eric Schultze, CTO of Shavlik Technologies. “It is a lot like Blaster and Sasser. It is the same exploit vector. If I am an attacker and I can touch NetBios then I can execute code with no credentials.”

[via Techworld]

[ad]Now This is due to the fact of what is happening with an update that came a few months ago the MS 08 – 067 that still people haven’t patched their systems.  According to F-secure the Downadup/Conflicker has grown overnight by a million computers being infected.

Now why are they scared of the recent patch (MS 09-001), because of so many vectors of infection, you don’t need any credentials.  The virus  does not  need to know any passwords or user names to gain access.  Just like the Downadup variant that is hitting the internet right now, this virus tries to access accounts by guessing weak passwords or even putting itself on flash drives or other mobile media to get other systems infected.

So why are admins scared over this new patch?

Most  companies don’t patch there system as quickly as Microsoft would like them to.   You see most companies have quite a few computers depending on the size of the company it could be quite a lot.  So many in fact that it would have several IT personal just to keep the system going.
[ad]

So why don’t they just put the new patches on the systems?

Depending on the size of the company and what they do has a lot to do with them updating there systems.  Some use really special programs or have a network going that is vital.  Even the smallest update to the system could bring the network or the program down.  Most companies liketo test it out on test machine for a while to make sure that the patch doesn’t  prevent the business from doing business.   Here are a few articles that prove why companies do not want to just install patches automatically:

Some companies are using older systems like Windows ME or some older Windows Operating systesm.   Although there isn’t anything we can do about those because Microsoft has stopped supporting them with updates and all.  I know we are all thinking thesame question?

Is there a way to fix the problem with Windows Updates?

I personally don’t have an answer but I am sure hackers will find ways to exploit codes so they can get on your system so way.  I’ve recently read a story about Adware Author and now I understand even more about why people do all of this.

This is one of the questions every admin has to ask themselves?  How do we update all of the systems we are responsible for?  There are no easy answers to this.