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.
You will spend February 3rd:
[ ] Answering frantic phone calls
[ ] Huddled in the corner with phone unplugged
Visual basic runs on linux now? news to me.
We only have ten windows users in the entire company, and if they get a virus – well, it’s their own fool fault. They’re not allowed net access on their windows machines anyway
You will spend February 3rd:
[ ] Answering frantic phone calls
[X] Huddled in the corner with phone unplugged
The article keeps going on about it being a worm, but since you actually have to open it yourself, surely it’s a Trojan? i.e It’s less serious since there’s only so far you can go to protect the user against their own stupidity (and their desire for porn!)
It’s not a trojan but a worm, since it’s self-propagating.
A virus is self-replicating code injecting itself into files, a worm is self-replicating code travelling through other means, and a trojan is simply malicious ‘sterile’ code.
I’d say it’s a trojan, since it’s not going to infect your computer unless you actually run the stupid thing. It propagates itself, but it looks like it’ll only do that if you run it.
The thought that this could be the biggest trojan of the year is really, really sad. Nothing clever, just… sex. It’s like… why do we bother patching security holes when people still fall for THAT?
With all of the free pornography EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK on the Internet, why do people still open obvious pornspam e-mails?
Human stupidity will never cease to amaze me.
“Windows users stupidity will never cease to amaze me.”
Thats what you meant to say and software is really is easy to install on windows, one click worm install. 🙂
No, what I meant to say is “Linux users will install the distro-du-jour, then proceed to masturbate together while talking about how great Linux is.”
Oh, oops … did I just say that?
Get a life.
This is so funny. Guess what, Windows will be on the news again the next two weeks for ruining f*ckloads of user data… nice marketing gag for vista’s new anti malware features, heh… but even if those who click anything that’s slower than the cursor well deserve a lesson, I am against data destruction of any kind. Darn, ne1 can hear the faint n00bish moaning behind the horizon…