http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2008, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Sat, 17 May 2008 08:29:42 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/19731/The_25_Year_Old_BSD_Bug/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19731/The_25_Year_Old_BSD_Bug/ 1983. The year of the IBM PC XT, the Apple Lisa, Pioneer 10 leaving the solar system, and Hooters opening up shop in Florida. It's also the birthyear of a 25 year old BSD bug, squashed only a few days ago. Sat, 10 May 2008 20:27:05 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 52 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News rosebug http://www.osnews.com/story/18660/Does_Antivirus_Have_a_Future_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/18660/Does_Antivirus_Have_a_Future_/ "For at least a decade, the standard advice to every computer user has been to run antivirus software. But new, more commercial, more complex and stealthier types of malware have people in the industry asking: will antivirus software be effective for much longer? Among the threats they see are malware that uses the ability of the latest processors to run virtual machines that would be hidden from antivirus programs." Note: Please note that our icon contest is still running! So if you have an idea on how to rework this story's icon, read this. Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:54:32 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 38 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News irbis http://www.osnews.com/story/18352/OSNews_Advertisement_Problem/ http://www.osnews.com/story/18352/OSNews_Advertisement_Problem/ A lot of people have been emailing us about an issue we are having with one of our ads taking over OSNews. Thank you all for emailing us, the information provided is of good use to us. We are currently working on the problem, and will let you know once it has been fixed. We would like to apologise for the inconvenience. Update by DA: I think that I've tracked down the offender. Read more for details Update 2: This time I think we really fixed it. Sat, 28 Jul 2007 11:07:54 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 95 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/15100/A_Brief_History_of_Viral_Time/ http://www.osnews.com/story/15100/A_Brief_History_of_Viral_Time/ "For about 20 years now we've been using the term computer viruses to describe self-replicating programs. Although such programs had previously been found on Apple computers, viruses entered the PC world in early 1986 with the Brain virus." Thu, 06 Jul 2006 10:31:01 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 8 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News Jesuspower http://www.osnews.com/story/14737/The_Word_Trojan:_Anatomy_of_an_Online_Story/ http://www.osnews.com/story/14737/The_Word_Trojan:_Anatomy_of_an_Online_Story/ "Lately I've been blogging quite a bit on the state of on-line journalism. One aspect of that topic that I haven't touched on for awhile is the way in which a story breaks, builds, morphs and spreads electronically. The recent announcement of the Backdoor.Ginwui virus provides an interesting opportunity to do this once again, in order to see who addressed the story and how (including by me), and what, if anything, it all means." OSNews did not report on this Backdoor.Ginwui virus. Sun, 28 May 2006 15:03:05 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 3 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News Andy Updegrove http://www.osnews.com/story/14298/Cross-Platform_Sample_Virus_Targets_Windows_Linux/ http://www.osnews.com/story/14298/Cross-Platform_Sample_Virus_Targets_Windows_Linux/ Virus researchers at Kaspersky Lab have found proof-of-concept code for a cross-platform virus capable of infecting both Windows and Linux systems. In an alert posted to Viruslist, Kaspersky said the sample virus has been given a dual name - Virus.Linux.Bi.a/ Virus.Win32.Bi.a - and highlighted the way attackers are targeting multiple platforms in malware attacks. "The virus doesn't have any practical application," the company said in the alert. "It's classic proof-of-concept code, written to show that it is possible to create a cross-platform virus." Mon, 10 Apr 2006 21:17:49 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 63 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/13846/First_Cell-Phone_Java_Trojan_on_the_Loose/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13846/First_Cell-Phone_Java_Trojan_on_the_Loose/ Alerts went out Tuesday from several security companies warning users of an in-the-wild Trojan horse able to infect nearly any cell phone. The Trojan, named Redbrowser.a by McAfee, F-Secure, and the discovering vendor Kaspersky Labs, can attack any device - smart phone, PDA, or cell phone - that runs Java 2 Micro Edition, Sun Microsystem's version for consumer electronics devices. Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:38:34 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 2 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News Moulinneuf http://www.osnews.com/story/13806/Free_Virtual_Bugzilla_Server/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13806/Free_Virtual_Bugzilla_Server/ "Virtual Bugzilla server is a virtual machine with pre-installed Bugzilla. Instead of spending hours (sometimes days) installing Bugzilla, why not just download a ready-to-use server? Virtual Bugzilla server is a VMWare virtual machine. You will need a free VMWare Player to run the server." Mon, 27 Feb 2006 16:48:20 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 7 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News sereda http://www.osnews.com/story/13558/Virus_Shuts_Down_Russian_Stock_Exchange/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13558/Virus_Shuts_Down_Russian_Stock_Exchange/ Trading was suspended for an hour at Russia's main stock exchange because of a computer virus, the Russian Trading Systems, or RTS, said Friday. Data processing was paralyzed late Thursday afternoon as specialists rushed to localize the virus and switch off the infected computer, according to a statement from the exchange. No permanent damage was caused and no information was lost. Spokeswoman Zoya Konovkova said it was not clear what virus had led to the shutdown. According to RTS vice president Dmitry Shatskoi, the virus entered the system via a computer used to test new software, which was connected to the Internet. Sat, 04 Feb 2006 14:15:44 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Andrew Youll) Bugs & Viruses 19 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/13555/Humanity_Survives_Kama_Sutra_Apocalypse/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13555/Humanity_Survives_Kama_Sutra_Apocalypse/ Security watchers say the Kama Sutra worm, which is programmed to overwrite files on infected Windows PCs today, will have a damaging but not catastrophic effect. The Kama Sutra worm (or Nyxem-E or Blackworm) poses as an email message offering a variety of salacious content. Subject lines used in the malicious emails include: The Best Videoclip Ever, Fw: SeX.mpg, Miss Lebanon 2006 and Fuckin Kama Sutra pics. The worm, which can also spread across network shares, only affects Windows PCs. Fri, 03 Feb 2006 22:41:01 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 40 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/13401/Worm_Set_to_Delete_Data_Files_on_February_3/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13401/Worm_Set_to_Delete_Data_Files_on_February_3/ While the most high-profile security vulnerability of late was almost certainly the WMF hole recently patched by Microsoft, in terms of actual numbers of infections it was barely a blip on the radar. According to the anti-virus company F-Secure, one of the most populous and dangerous infections today is not some sophisticated bit of code exploiting a new and exotic security hole, but an old-school e-mail worm written in Visual Basic that spreads by tempting users with free pornography. Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:14:20 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/13390/PC_Viruses_Hit_20_Year_Milestone/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13390/PC_Viruses_Hit_20_Year_Milestone/ "It was during the opening weeks of 1986 that the first PC virus, called Brain, was discovered in the wild. Though it achieved fame because it was the first of its type, the virus was not widespread as it could only travel by hitching a ride on floppy disks swapped between users. Now 20 years after they first appeared there are more than 150000 malicious programs in existence." Sun, 22 Jan 2006 12:50:16 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 44 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/13271/Microsoft_Installs_Patch_Without_Permission/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13271/Microsoft_Installs_Patch_Without_Permission/ Users of Windows who have set the Automatic Updates option to "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them" were surprised to find that the latest WMF patch had overridden these settings and not only installed the patch, but rebooted the machines as well. Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:36:48 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Bugs & Viruses 97 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News Resolution http://www.osnews.com/story/13261/Windows_vs._Linux:_Think_Patch_Quality_Not_Quantity/ http://www.osnews.com/story/13261/Windows_vs._Linux:_Think_Patch_Quality_Not_Quantity/ Tests at Microsoft's Linux lab show that counting the raw number of security updates required by the various operating system flavors is not as meaningful as examining the efficiency of the update process. Wed, 11 Jan 2006 18:04:35 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Bugs & Viruses 42 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/12620/Viruses_Use_Sony_Anti-Piracy_CDs/ http://www.osnews.com/story/12620/Viruses_Use_Sony_Anti-Piracy_CDs/ Virus writers are exploiting Sony's controversial anti-piracy software to hide their malicious creations. In late October Sony was found to be using stealth techniques to hide software that stopped some of its CDs being illegally copied. Now three virus variants have been found that use the Sony software to evade detection by anti-virus programs. The rootkit is also installed on Mac OS X systems. Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Bugs & Viruses 17 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News JCooper