Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12357&Form.ShowMessage=2300708

I am a software engineer and I know about the existence of virus from the beginning. I don't care and never cared too much about them, I don't use firewall, have no active antivirus running and only got infected my computer twice in ten years only by a stupid error of mine. Time to time I receive some email with virus, but not too much and in general I ignore all the posts about virus. Last days I've received two emails that caught my attention due to the sofistication and have posted about them here. The last email had a virus with extreme sofistication, maybe is from a new generation of virus, this virus was not detected by two antivirus! I was thinking about and is possible to create virus that are impossible to be detected by any kind of virus, present of future, and is very simple to do it. I don't know if the received virus belong to a new generation of undetectable virus or is only a new virus that hadn't been added yet to the antivirus's virus definition list.

Message edited on: 06/15/2005 02:13

If someone can create it, some other can counteract it... I'm NOT a software engineer and I don't know what kind of OS do you use, but I had my fair share of virii attempting to infect my systems almost twice or trice at months only to be repelled from the progs that I always leave running while my PC is on (a firewall, an antivirus and a spyware detector), and by the common sense of don't open attachments if I don't have the confirmation that they are from a trusted source. It seems VERY strange to me that you don't know the nowadays endemic virus problem if you regularily connect to Internet or use email... and, yes, today viriui are very sophisticated - and antivirus software too.

Wait until you recieve several of those per day, you have succesfully upgraded your password, your account has been suspended and so, all desperately trying to look like they originated from my provider who: 1. is Dutch and never communicates in English with its customers and has changed its name more than a year ago into something else.

I think it is possible to make hard to detect virusses, but you still have to send them around in this way, and that is their achilles-heel, even if you upgrade a password for a forum or other website it will be highly unusual to recieve an e-mail about it, especially one with an attachment.

One obeservation i do have is that most of those virusses send themselves around by guessing E-mail adresses, I have only one adress that recieves virusses on a more regular basis (and those get blasted by the AV) because it consists of a commonly used name (at) oldprovidersname dot net. All the other adresses that i use are probo to difficult for them.

" If someone can create it, some other can counteract it..."
Not always, that's the problem, it can be done a virus that is imposible to be detected by any antivirus, if it was not done yet! Most of the people's security depend on firewalls and antivirus, if they fail to detect the virus those people are lost.

Message edited on: 06/15/2005 05:22

Another important fact about the received virus is that Windows report it as *.htm and not as *.pif. The pif extension only is reported under DOS or clicking "file properties" in Windows, in some ways is a bug of Windows, I'm going to discover why it happens.
Ok, people don't open htm attachments, but if the bastards were more little expert and put an inofensive extension such as txt, jpg, gif instead of htm?

Message edited on: 06/15/2005 05:39

I never open My emails,except for the ones that have a response from my direct involvement!

kawecki .... "I don't use firewall, have no active antivirus running" No disrespect here. But thats what I call self-inficted. I spend a lot of my time cleaning spyware and viruses from home user systems. XP is particulary prone as SP1 leaves messanger on as default, and that can easily call a webpage with a hidden dialler. If you need help to remove the nastys, try this 1st. Get yourself Ad-aware SE, Spybot Search and Destroy, and AVG. Then once your clean get zonealarm and panicwares pop-up killer. They are all free.

I have Ad-aware SE, the last time I used it was 40 days ago, before replying this post I have updated it and run it and the result were only 18 cookies of IE explorer, nothing more. For what do I need a firewall???? I DON'T use XP and my IE6 is very limited in functions. I use Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape.

"For what do I need a firewall????" Blocking unsafe email attachments.

Err, point of order - actual firewalls only block ports. Some software-based "firewalls" may have some scanning abilities built in for POP3, but they likely don't stop much beyond whatever built-in or added-on definitions happen to be there. Personally, the only time I bother with Internet Exploder is to run updates for the one Windows box in the house - belonging to my wife. I haven't opened Outlook in any form on any machine in my home for at least two years. I haven't had to bother with anything for "protection" beyond auto-running Ad-Aware and PestPatrol on the wife's machine, and keeping patches current on my hardware firewall, which is based on ucLinux. The Mac and Linux boxes automatically update themselves patch-wise, and compared to what everyone else in RL is doing to frantically keep out the bad stuff, I seem to have a lot more free time to play instead of constantly trying to keep up with the BS floating around in the 'doze world. /P

I seem to have a lot more free time to play instead of constantly trying to keep up with the BS floating around in the 'doze world

Yeah......but do you get to play Freecell while the boss isn't looking?

When it comes to an OS -- I prefer to go with something that's compatible with 85% of the rest of the world. Even when the world is a dangerous place. To me, the disadvantages are out-weighed by the advantages.

shrug

To each their own.

^Lol.
The reason Pengy has more free time is because he got fired shortly after I told him what goes around comes around. ;-)

All of that Anti-virus stuff is too bothersome for me.
Make a ghost image of your HD then open anything you want and go wherever you want.
Sometimes I open things just to see what It'll do to my system. :-)

I can replace my entire system with one DVD disk in the time it takes me to drink a cup of coffee.
The term Anti-virus is an oxymoron for me personally.

-ScottA

Message edited on: 06/15/2005 12:07

"Make a ghost image of your HD then open anything you want and go wherever you want. ... Sometimes I open things just to see what It'll do to my system. :-)" Yeah, so when someone will get a DDS attack with yours as one of the originating machines, he will know who to thanks... Is people like you that make proliferation of virii an easy job, 'cos you don't caree a s**t of the damage you can cause to others. Way to go, ScottA!!!!!!!!! ;)

Penguinisto: "Err, point of order - actual firewalls only block ports." "but they likely don't stop much" True. but they can stop the ones that comes in after mailwasher has done it's job. That, and lots of explict filtering rules within your mail client. "I haven't opened Outlook in any form on any machine in my home for at least two years." Same here. I NEVER use it. No sesnible person would one. I only use IE and netscape because of needing to test webpages. Yet I've just started a training course to help with teaching and they insist you have to use it. Most of the other students are newbies, and they'll belive it it's OK. Personally I'd rather keep the computing equivalant of a baseball bat behind my virtual door. Saves hassle later. Al

" Yeah......but do you get to play Freecell while the boss isn't looking?" Nah - instead I have well over 100+ games that came with SuSE that I can mess with during lunch break and such. FreeCell is kinda boring compared to GL-117 or TuxRacer. :D "I can replace my entire system with one DVD disk in the time it takes me to drink a cup of coffee." Must be one really tiny Runtime you got there, Scotty. ;) /P

It's a good thing you didn't get overdramatic blaufeld. Rolls Eyes It's not the size of your Runtime......It's how you use it.:-p -ScottA

Nothing beats a game of Freecell at the office.

I mean....after all......we're talkin' tradition here........

Of course -- the Great Tradition used to be a game of Solitaire while the spreadsheets were printing out (loudly) on the dot-matrix printer.

Perhaps Solitaire is still the only way to go for some.

But I believe in being original and innovative. That's why I play Freecell.

In times of DOS 2.1 it was the pinball, twenty guys around the only one computer waiting their turn to play. Speaking about noisy matrix printers, once I had the bad idea of print some work during lunch time, almost was killed by some guys that were sleeping!

Yes -- while I'm at the office --

-- between forum posts and games of Freecell I've pretty well got my day covered.

After all: PRODUCTIVITY is the key to success.

At least we don't have to listen to the grating sound of a dot-matrix printer.

I agree with your former co-workers. How are we expected to get any sleep at our desks with all of that noise going on?

Oh, no.....the phone is ringing again........and it's after 5:00, too.......how rude can clients be?

"It's a good thing you didn't get overdramatic blaufeld. Rolls Eyes" Being paranoid it's not the problem... it is being it for the right reasons, that keep me awake at night! :D

Attached Link: http://www.anti-spam-tools.com/

Download Mailbox Dispatcher at the link. It's a program that enables you to preview your mail before you download it to your computer. It can download mail from several POP accounts, can learn what's spam and what not, can see about viruses, and most important (AGAIN!) does it all on your server, so your mail program won't even see the deleted mail. And it's free. I hate "junk filters" in mail clients. Why would I download trash at all? If you can't access the link, try tucows.com at http://www.tucows.com/preview/378545.