Re: Cost of viruses etc., on PC's

Hi John,

Found your post!

John Slade wrote:
You mean two times the computer was exploited. I'm talking exploitable
holes. If you go by that, there are many exploitable holes in OS X. Some are
patched and some probably aren't.


Agreed. But I'm able to keep my OS X box on the internet without having
to worry about viruses.
That hasn't been the case for me with Windows.

Actually I'm right. You see people who spread viruses want to SPREAD
them. When they put a virus out, 90%+ of the time it will be a Windows
computer. Only about 4% of the time it will be an OS X system. So do the
math and the common sense. No hacker who wants to spread a virus or trojan
far and wide would target OS X. Even if they infect one, the chances are
that the infected OS X system will have a slim chance of infecting another
one.


I hope you are exactly right. It'd be great of I was totally off track.

But my hunch is that any sadistic-mean-loser-computer-terrorist who
would leash a virus on a Windows OS would love to screw up Apple
machines. Also, if you could disable 4% of all machines (perhaps 10% of
all consumer machines) and you were an attacker - wouldn't you do it?



Not when the chances of finding one to infect is so low. Let's review.
The reason OS X isn't exploited as much is not because it's a better OS. It
has holes that will allow anyone to run arbitrary code on it without any
permissions or passwords needed.

It sounds to me like you're making an exponential case here where the
case is linear.


Ok now there's your problem. Exactly how did they get access to the firmware?

I haven't a clue.

Are you sure it was a hacker?

No. The All-In-One had 48 confirmed viruses. I figured the events were
related.

Tell me about this IBM All-In-One computer. How old is it and what is the model number?

IBM X41 800Mhz P3.

What OS were you running?

2000 Professional.

Just curious because you left a lot of stuff out.


You mean regedit.exe was missing?

Now were changing machines and talking about the ThinkPad.

P3 300. Running 2000.

Probably. I didn't know how to navigate to regedit.exe. I just know I
can't run it by navigating to it from Control Panel. I get a blank
screen when clicking on Add/Remove Programs.


That's the software that is used to edit the registry. You could have copied it from another computer.

Agreed. I could if one of my friends was driving 2000.

This is starting not to sound like a virus and more like a HD errors. Did you try
doing an offline HD scan? BTW what Anti-virus software were you running?

Now were back to talking about the All-In-One, the white noise
computer...

I wasn't running any anti-virus software on that machine.

On my Transnote the machine, I don't know exactly what happened, but
they made it so that the machine only runs at about 10 Mhz.

Ok can you please explain to me how you knew hackers had invaded your
system and hacked your machine?

OK. Now we're talking about the Transnote:

Symptom: It was practically a brand new machine and it couldn't do real
work.

On that machine after the attack with no virus software I reinstalled
the OS (you
can do that because a copy of the OS is built into the machine) and
installed an
out of the box Norton Virus killer.

I know the machine was infected before re-installing because I was able
to install Norton before the reinstall.


Did you have a log of the attacks?

No. I don't even know where to look. The system log file only logs
errors not log ins. No issues.

BTW, John, Any tips on where to look - aside from the system error log
file would be appreciated.

Oh yes, after the OS reinstall on the Transnote, my customer (my
daughter-in-law) reported that the machine returned to the state of
being too slow to use.

I bought here an eMac - just to make like easier on myself.


Some of the problems you cite don't sound like a hacker. When you make the claims
that these things are the rusults of a virus or hacker, I would expect a
little more accurate information. As it stands any number of problems could
have caused these things to happen.


Agreed. No proof. Maybe not a hacker. All this is based upon my
figuring that the viruses and machine performance were related.

BTW, my machine at work is infected with some sort of pop-up thing - I
have to run it with pop-ups disabled! Techsupport has install a bunch
of virus software - but they haven't been able to fix the machine.
That's another thread.


As to my not knowing about how to upkeep a Windows machine, I plead
guilty as charged.

We'll see when you asnwer the questions.


This time you'll agree. I'm mostly guilty.


Damn that's really stupid. You gave away a whole machine because of a
virus. Let me tell you this, it can be fixed. Hell if firmware was hacked,
it can be fixed via another motherboard or firmware.


For the All-In-One, and having lost the machine once, it's not worth
the trouble to save it. We spent over 30 hours trying.


He experimented with using a USB set up for sound. But he ended up recycling the machine. The Transnote is sitting unused in my daughter-in-law's house.

Hmmmm. This is starting to sound fishy to me.


Nothing I can do about that.


No they weren't lost, they just had problems. You are the first person
I know to have 3 comptuers hit so bad by hackers and virii that you gave
them away and junked them. I think you're making this up. Some of it or at
least part of it.


My virus expert friend knows of some other instances.


2005. At that time if I put a Windows machine on my network it would
have been infected in less than 10 minutes. I learned that by
reinstalling the OS on the Transnote and connecting to the internet -
hoping to download a patch.


Ok it sound like your making this up.

You say that "if" you put a
Windows machine up for 10 minutes this would happen. So that means you were
used to this happening. Did you ever once think of putting the computer up
with anti-virus software on it?


I give you credit for being through. Yes, I was making it up. I got the
10 minute figure from a asking a knowledgable Windows co-worker who
cited a statistic based upon the monitoring of his network.

Like you, he is sceptical of my experience, since he mostly has no
problems running Windows.

Because he knows me, he's not inclined to suggest that I'm lying.

.

Relevant Pages

  • hlp plz
    ... >i run windows xp home. ... What is notable about this virus is ... Shared drives: Runs as an NT service and can spread on ... virus can infect Explorer.exe on a Windows NT system. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.accessibility)
  • Re: How secure are you
    ... Windows is running and doing whatever it takes to make ... users on Linux is to compromise on this advantage that they now ... So for a virus to propagate from one file to the next is ... > If Windows didn't have this feature, then a virus wouldn't be able to infect ...
    (alt.computer.security)
  • Re: OE crashes
    ... > was a program running during one of the windows updates ... >>OLEXP Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express ... Turn off email scanning in your antivirus software. ... > attempting to infect your system, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress)
  • Re: Outlook Express could not be started
    ... >>OLEXP Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express ... Turn off email scanning in your antivirus software. ... > attempting to infect your system, ... >>Windows 2000 and Windows XP. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress)
  • Re: WoW Cartographe
    ... how else could I get a virus on my system? ... > Not if you keep your version of Windows up-to-date, ... >> good anti-virus is an act of criminal stupidity. ... > anti-virus software. ...
    (alt.games.warcraft)