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Enough with f-cking WINDOWS!

digger

digger

Chairman of Board
Chairman Member
Doodages, things are rough all over. CNN almost swallowed its chewing gum last night; a worm that attacks Windows 2000 (only!) kicked them in the nuts. THREE major Windows viruses (redundant; every significant virus is a Windows virus) were released this week at practically the same time and it's eating the network alive, not just here.

The one IvanOffelich ran into will infect an unpatched Windows box if you open a fucking picture. That's about as bad as it gets.

Here's the thing: Suppose we virus scan every upload you give us. Tough, but barely possible. SO WHAT? Almost every graphic on your screen is hosted on some other site over which we have zero control. None. All that was posted here was a LINK to that other site. Even if WE follow that link and scan what's there to try to protect you (which is maybe 100 times tougher than scanning stuff you upload to your gallery here), the poster can change the file that the link points to after we "approve" it.

Short answer: The only thing I see happening on this front is that unpatched Windows boxes are going to die. Run your damn Windows Update right fucking now, move to Mac or Linux, or get the hell off the Internet.

You have a PC and don't know what to do? Get a copy of Knoppix. It's a CD you boot that will start up a virgin desktop with a working email and web browser WITHOUT WRITING ANYTHING TO YOUR HARD DISK. Every time you boot off the CD, it's a fresh start. You can save your settings to a memory stick, but otherwise NOTHING is saved to your disk. It's a paranoid's dream. Pop the CD out and reboot, bam, you're back in Windows like nothing ever happened.

(Yeah, it's Linux. That doesn't matter. You click on stuff and it runs, just like Windows.)

It's a free download and the desktop looks enough like Windows that if you didn't tell anyone they'd just think you had strange taste in wallpaper. That's the good news.

Download it at www.knoppix.org; it's a full CD so it's a pretty big download, and you have to know how to burn an .ISO file to make the bootable CD. That's the bad news. Sorry I can't make it any easier.
 
if i have xp will i need the other stuff???? so are you saying i shouldnt click on any pics?
 
Digger, you rock to the nth power bro. I can only imagine the amount of crapola you deal with in regards to this, and the simple fact that you haven't flipped completely the f*ck out and went on a tri-state killing spree speaks volumes.

And as far as these *ahem* "people" who write these malicious codes...

IMHO, once apprehended, they should be skinned alive, salted, then locked in irons publicly and left for the birds to do with as they will.

Life is difficult enough as it is without these slack-jawed inbred f*cktards purposely making shit just that much more unbearable.
 
digger said:
Doodages, things are rough all over. CNN almost swallowed its chewing gum last night; a worm that attacks Windows 2000 (only!) kicked them in the nuts. THREE major Windows viruses (redundant; every significant virus is a Windows virus) were released this week at practically the same time and it's eating the network alive, not just here.

The one IvanOffelich ran into will infect an unpatched Windows box if you open a fucking picture. That's about as bad as it gets.

Here's the thing: Suppose we virus scan every upload you give us. Tough, but barely possible. SO WHAT? Almost every graphic on your screen is hosted on some other site over which we have zero control. None. All that was posted here was a LINK to that other site. Even if WE follow that link and scan what's there to try to protect you (which is maybe 100 times tougher than scanning stuff you upload to your gallery here), the poster can change the file that the link points to after we "approve" it.

Short answer: The only thing I see happening on this front is that unpatched Windows boxes are going to die. Run your damn Windows Update right fucking now, move to Mac or Linux, or get the hell off the Internet.

You have a PC and don't know what to do? Get a copy of Knoppix. It's a CD you boot that will start up a virgin desktop with a working email and web browser WITHOUT WRITING ANYTHING TO YOUR HARD DISK. Every time you boot off the CD, it's a fresh start. You can save your settings to a memory stick, but otherwise NOTHING is saved to your disk. It's a paranoid's dream. Pop the CD out and reboot, bam, you're back in Windows like nothing ever happened.

(Yeah, it's Linux. That doesn't matter. You click on stuff and it runs, just like Windows.)

It's a free download and the desktop looks enough like Windows that if you didn't tell anyone they'd just think you had strange taste in wallpaper. That's the good news.

Download it at www.knoppix.org; it's a full CD so it's a pretty big download, and you have to know how to burn an .ISO file to make the bootable CD. That's the bad news. Sorry I can't make it any easier.
Click to expand...

is there anyway to partition your harddrive so you dont have to deal with the memory stick, and can use the internet running stuff through knopix and have all that managed through one partition that never gets saved, and then have ur clean partition with offline files? or do partitions not even work like that
 
oh yeah, and im dling my updates now...

are u saying updates and klnopixoin? or is updates itself good enoguh
 
Angel: I'm saying that Windows is so screwed up that you don't even have to click on the damn pics any more. Just having one of these Evil Pictures show up on your screen knocks your PC up, unless you have already applied the patches to prevent it. Scared yet? Good, you should be.

SubZ: The memory stick thing is for people who can't stand the thought of typing in their settings every time they boot. If you want to, the Knoppix CD does have an option to split your NTFS partition and install itself permanently, just like installing any other kind of Linux (it's "Debian testing" with lots of extra goodies, if that means anything to you).

But for the current exercise, call it "walk before you run," it's enough to just boot off the CD and enjoy. It's your way out of the Windows nightmare. If you like it, you can migrate to using it full time but that's the advanced lesson.
 
Klaus, the guy behind Knoppix, is a good guy. It's a version of Debian Linux, by the way.
 
Mr. dB said:
Klaus, the guy behind Knoppix, is a good guy. It's a version of Debian Linux, by the way.
Click to expand...
this is why I always thought mr db meant Mr Database
 
I tried knoppix in the past... amazing stuff, and incredible how fast it boots.

My recommendation to run it nicely, get at least 512Mb RAM... if you have 1Gb you will be very happy
 
digger said:
Angel: I'm saying that Windows is so screwed up that you don't even have to click on the damn pics any more. Just having one of these Evil Pictures show up on your screen knocks your PC up, unless you have already applied the patches to prevent it. Scared yet? Good, you should be.

SubZ: The memory stick thing is for people who can't stand the thought of typing in their settings every time they boot. If you want to, the Knoppix CD does have an option to split your NTFS partition and install itself permanently, just like installing any other kind of Linux (it's "Debian testing" with lots of extra goodies, if that means anything to you).

But for the current exercise, call it "walk before you run," it's enough to just boot off the CD and enjoy. It's your way out of the Windows nightmare. If you like it, you can migrate to using it full time but that's the advanced lesson.
Click to expand...
hey digger what evil pics???? i am not a comp wizard, and i have no clue what is going on!!
 
I have SUSE Linux installed on my PC... I don't reeally use it much since I forgot the Root password and Korqueror won't let me into my @elitefitness.com e-mail account cause it hates JAVA.


It takes a while to learn but I can't be bothered doing it on my own.


-BRR
 
Just boot the CD SublimeZM. I've used Knoppix before and it pretty much sorts itself. There are others but it's best if everyone sticks to the same one, at least for a while.

[Nerd]
It'd be awesome to have an exodus away from Windows.
[/Nerd]

Anyone who is dickering on the edge of moving to a Mac, I can tell you that I've had absolutely zero problems these past few days other than the knock-on effects of network and Internet problems on Windows boxes around the world. Macs rock. Obviously, I've had the outages since that was a DNS issue, as GS explained.
 
Fedora is pretty easy to get up and running, also. The Mac Mini's are only 500$, though, and Tiger is great.
 
Lestat said:
this is why I always thought mr db meant Mr Database
Click to expand...

Nah, but I have some friends who have a private newsserver with about 30 or so regular participants. It works like a USENET newsgroup, except that it's not on USENET, the newsgroups on that server aren't mirrored anywhere else.

At any rate, about a year or two ago one of the guys there was messing with Knoppix when it was new, and had some hardware issues, and somehow Klaus showed up in there and started working with the guy to resolve the issues, and the result was several Knoppix version upgrades.

I can't get too excited about Linux just because all the apps I've seen for it are still pretty amateurish. I guess that's the nature of open source software, things will lack the spit and polish of a commercial product. As for Windows sucking because it's under attack by so many viruses and worms and trojans, that's just because of its popularity, since over 90% of the world's personal computers are on Windows, it only makes sense that the computer terrorists would go after them. Linux and Mac enjoy the luxury of security via obscurity.
 
It's not as simple as obscurity. Windows is insecure by design. Much of it inter-threaded and inter-dependent. A few years ago Microsoft made an effort to integrate IE into as much of the OS as possible to prevent having to remove it and allow users easy access to Netscape. Nowadays, we pay the price since IE is a leaky sieve and many of the holes lead straight to the guts of your machine.

Under a Unix-style environment, the security is part of the design. Someone could hack my browser but ferreting its way into the operating system and taking over the machine would require my active cooperation and passwords. If someone were to write a mac or linux virus and mail it to me, I would have to open up the equivalent of a dos-box and tell the system that I wanted it run. Kind of "Yes, infect me, please, and do it now."

Different paradigms. I agree, though, that Linux is quirky at best and often seems a nerdish nightmare at first. I won't ramble on about macs.
 
Angel: the bad people are creating pictures that are booby-trapped and posting them to boards hoping you'll open that page. No more, no less. It used to be you had to at least click on the picture -- now just going to the page will do it.

Wump: What you said. When you're running Windows, you're running as root and if you get owned, the whole box is owned. There's no place to hide.

On a Linux box (or a Mac) running as a user, even if you click on something really stupid, the bad guy still has to climb a freaking mountain to take over the rest of the box.

dB: The apps aren't sparkly pretty? Christ, boot up Knoppix, run Firefox, shut it down -- at least that way you'll still HAVE a Windows install to run Office on when you're done surfing. It ain't security by obscurity. It's the difference between a single-user box with passwords and networking both bolted on as an afterthought, vs a box that was designed from day one to be multi-user, multi-group, and networked.
 
digger- you remembered me....yah
any how so i should be advised to not click on any links? i usually dont because peoples pics generally pop up any ways..the hubby on the other hand...............
 
The last time I saw digger this passionate about something was when he was lambasting the Bomb Squad.
 
Digger knows his yellow onions from his white ones.

Angel, I hope by now you've at least stopped using IE and switched over to Firefox while your shiny new Knoppix is still downloading.
 
Blut Wump said:
Digger knows his yellow onions from his white ones.

Angel, I hope by now you've at least stopped using IE and switched over to Firefox while your shiny new Knoppix is still downloading.
Click to expand...
no i am lucky i can turn this thing on....lol
what is IE???? how do i do any of this? will any of my windows programs be lost? what is knoppix?
 
Angel said:
no i am lucky i can turn this thing on....lol
what is IE???? how do i do any of this? will any of my windows programs be lost? what is knoppix?
Click to expand...

Hmm, if you're serious then have a word with a friend who knows about computers who can download and install fresh programs with confidence. Someone who can setup a firewall or router (you can check that they know what these things are) and make your machine less friendly to passersby. The Internet has become like a mall on drinks night in a strange town and there are some bad people looking to hijack passing machines and use them and maybe your personal info and data for their own nefarious ends. It's everyone's own responsibility to see to their own protection.

Knoppix is what Digger mentioned in the opening post. It's kind of an alternative to browsing on Windows and can make your machine guaranteed safe from intrusion since it has no need to use your hard drive.
 
You can start by downloading Firefox from here:
http://www.mozilla.org/

Double-click the file you download and remember the new icon it makes. Use this to access the Internet in future rather than Internet Explorer.

It'll make you a bit safer and should be fairly painless. You can work up to better options. Good luck.
 
Blut Wump said:
You can start by downloading Firefox from here:
http://www.mozilla.org/

Double-click the file you download and remember the new icon it makes. Use this to access the Internet in future rather than Internet Explorer.

It'll make you a bit safer and should be fairly painless. You can work up to better options. Good luck.
Click to expand...
i dont use IE should i still do it?
 
Well, you've stepped outside my experience with that one. I expect that MSN offers you a lot of features which you'll be using for chatting and the like and it probably is tied to using Internet Explorer. I reckon that if you're happy with your machine then let it be. Keep up with the Windows updates whenever you can.

Don't be afraid to give Firefox a whirl, though. It's a more reliable way to use the Internet.
 
i bet you money that microsoft had someone make this virus... now if you use windows you have the option of updating (which now requires the download of a product key validator) or getting your computer ruined... all hacked win versions are going down unless their users now how to install 3rd party win updates... genious i say.
 
ZKaudio said:
i bet you money that microsoft had someone make this virus... now if you use windows you have the option of updating (which now requires the download of a product key validator) or getting your computer ruined... all hacked win versions are going down unless their users now how to install 3rd party win updates... genious i say.
Click to expand...

Security updates are still available even on hacked versions, if the auto-update feature is turned on. You just can't go through the front door of Windows Update to get them.
 
Knoppix sounds interesting but it's not a long term solution

Unless you just use your PC for internet, you'll need to write on your HD
and what about cookies, swap files etc?

But it's definitely interesting
 
BTW, does anyone know why I can't run Windows update on mu XP SP1?

I've the following error:
Please change your Internet Explorer security settings
To save changes to your settings for this website, you need to enable userdata persistence for Internet Explorer. Complete the steps below, and then click Change settings to the left and try saving your changes again.
In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
Click the Security tab, click the Internet security zone icon, and then click Custom Level.
In the Settings dialog box, scroll to the Miscellaneous section.
Under Userdata persistence , select Enable.
Click OK and when the security warning dialog box appears, click Yes.

which doesn't apply b/c my settings are all good
 
The timing of these outbreaks is susipicious
 
digger said:
Doodages, things are rough all over. CNN almost swallowed its chewing gum last night; a worm that attacks Windows 2000 (only!) kicked them in the nuts. THREE major Windows viruses (redundant; every significant virus is a Windows virus) were released this week at practically the same time and it's eating the network alive, not just here.

The one IvanOffelich ran into will infect an unpatched Windows box if you open a fucking picture. That's about as bad as it gets.

Here's the thing: Suppose we virus scan every upload you give us. Tough, but barely possible. SO WHAT? Almost every graphic on your screen is hosted on some other site over which we have zero control. None. All that was posted here was a LINK to that other site. Even if WE follow that link and scan what's there to try to protect you (which is maybe 100 times tougher than scanning stuff you upload to your gallery here), the poster can change the file that the link points to after we "approve" it.

Short answer: The only thing I see happening on this front is that unpatched Windows boxes are going to die. Run your damn Windows Update right fucking now, move to Mac or Linux, or get the hell off the Internet.

You have a PC and don't know what to do? Get a copy of Knoppix. It's a CD you boot that will start up a virgin desktop with a working email and web browser WITHOUT WRITING ANYTHING TO YOUR HARD DISK. Every time you boot off the CD, it's a fresh start. You can save your settings to a memory stick, but otherwise NOTHING is saved to your disk. It's a paranoid's dream. Pop the CD out and reboot, bam, you're back in Windows like nothing ever happened.

(Yeah, it's Linux. That doesn't matter. You click on stuff and it runs, just like Windows.)

It's a free download and the desktop looks enough like Windows that if you didn't tell anyone they'd just think you had strange taste in wallpaper. That's the good news.

Download it at www.knoppix.org; it's a full CD so it's a pretty big download, and you have to know how to burn an .ISO file to make the bootable CD. That's the bad news. Sorry I can't make it any easier.
Click to expand...



I would argue that linux is lax in security compared to freebsd and openbsd which are also free download.
1. linux ipchains is a rewrite of freebsd ipfw
2. MacOS10 was written from FreeBSD
3. chflags allows files to be flagged such that root cannot delete them
4. BSD security limits CPU and IO utilization of all users including root
5. Kernel security stops network interfaces from being places in promiscious mode , stop functionality of X.org and stop any changes of the firewall or sysctl from being done without rebooting into lower kernel security
6. BSD's come configured with jails , which allows for services to be ran in a chrooted virtual host where root can be release but yet doesn't have access to the rest of the system.
7. BSD has blowfish password converted , so user password that are des+md5 can be converted to the much stronger blowfish cryptotgraphy
8. BSD comes with linux compatibility mode
9. kernel modules can be loaded from te boot prompt , instead of having to create an initrd and placing read only rom based filesystem. What if the module you want loaded is a raid controller???


Enough... I feel Linux is an inferior product
 
digger said:
......infect an unpatched Windows box if you open a fucking picture......
Click to expand...

Say what? how is that possible. you have any link or additional info on that?? A pic is just an unexecutable glop of data.
 
i wish there was an alternative to windows.. i have used linux but it just isn't the same.
 
Mavafanculo said:
Say what? how is that possible. you have any link or additional info on that?? A pic is just an unexecutable glop of data.
Click to expand...
A pic is just a glop of data. The program that looks at it is a running program.

Almost all pics on the Internet are compressed and so the program has to decompress the picture using standard procedures. Unfortunately, in IE they got some bits wrong by not checking for expansion codes being out of expected ranges. This causes it to use more space than it allocated which, if the data making up the picture is carefully crafted, causes the program to overwrite itself in a way which changes it to do things the hacker wanted. That can include something as simple as going back onto the 'Net and downloading another program to do whatever they want.

The problem lies in the viewing program which is vulnerable to the malformed nature of the 'picture'. People keep coming up with these so-called buffer-overflow vulnerabilities in IE. A big part of the problem is that IE has tendrils and threads running throughout Windows, many of which other parts of the OS rely on. With something like Firefox, if someone finds a hole you just replace the browser. With IE they have to patch and change huge swathes of the system and that become hard for them to keep track of and consequently takes much, much longer to do. A Firefox update for a known vulnerability can appear overnight. A Windows update can take weeks to cobble together after a notification during which time the hackers can refine their position and you're wide open.
 
gjohnson5 said:
I would argue that linux is lax in security compared to freebsd and openbsd which are also free download.
1. linux ipchains is a rewrite of freebsd ipfw
2. MacOS10 was written from FreeBSD
3. chflags allows files to be flagged such that root cannot delete them
4. BSD security limits CPU and IO utilization of all users including root
5. Kernel security stops network interfaces from being places in promiscious mode , stop functionality of X.org and stop any changes of the firewall or sysctl from being done without rebooting into lower kernel security
6. BSD's come configured with jails , which allows for services to be ran in a chrooted virtual host where root can be release but yet doesn't have access to the rest of the system.
7. BSD has blowfish password converted , so user password that are des+md5 can be converted to the much stronger blowfish cryptotgraphy
8. BSD comes with linux compatibility mode
9. kernel modules can be loaded from te boot prompt , instead of having to create an initrd and placing read only rom based filesystem. What if the module you want loaded is a raid controller???


Enough... I feel Linux is an inferior product
Click to expand...
Agreed, OpenBSD has the reputation of being the most secure OS on the the planet.

You can still modify chflags from single-user mode but, yes, another great Unix feature.

I wasn't aware of your point #8, thanks for the heads-up.

BSD rocks!

I just can't see ever being able to tell my wife to switch to a raw BSD and expecting her to get on with it. I can slap a Linux up there for her in a lax enugh mode that she's functional and not inconvenienced by the security. Admittedly, she'll be behind my router, anyway.

Better still, I can let her roam freely with FreeBSD on a Mac and all she'll complain about is having the close buttons on the wrong side of the top of the window and the 'stupid' dock. For 95% of the time she won't even be conscious of the fact that she isn't using Windows.
 
Blut Wump said:
Agreed, OpenBSD has the reputation of being the most secure OS on the the planet.

You can still modify chflags from single-user mode but, yes, another great Unix feature.

I wasn't aware of your point #8, thanks for the heads-up.

BSD rocks!

I just can't see ever being able to tell my wife to switch to a raw BSD and expecting her to get on with it. I can slap a Linux up there for her in a lax enugh mode that she's functional and not inconvenienced by the security. Admittedly, she'll be behind my router, anyway.

Better still, I can let her roam freely with FreeBSD on a Mac and all she'll complain about is having the close buttons on the wrong side of the top of the window and the 'stupid' dock. For 95% of the time she won't even be conscious of the fact that she isn't using Windows.
Click to expand...

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2000/11/16/Big_Scary_Daemons.html

Did I forget to mention the OS rebuild capability?? In linux you use yum / apt or up2date and it will download a bunch of binaries to upgrade your sysem. BSD uses cvsup and all changes to the OS and all OS version are available through cvs.

run buildworld and you can change your bsd version to whatever you want.
 
ok my mom had her windows shut down on her at work and her comp shut off as well..needless to say her work comp had the worm or what ever it is so she doesnt dare turn on her home comp now...can one of you comp smart people please pm me how to change my system so i can not have to worry aslo so i can show her how to do it? can i upgrade my windows will that help protect???
 
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