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        New Message Board Archives >> 2005 General Board Posts >> Trojan attack takes files hostage
        
(Message started by: purpleydog on May 25^th, 2005, 8:03pm)

Title: Trojan attack takes files hostage
Post by purpleydog on May 25^th, 2005, 8:03pm

Another reason not to use Internet Explorer.

http://www.theregister.com/2005/05/25/trojan_hostage_attack/

Firefox...
No pop-ups either.Blocks them all.

http://www.mozilla.org/

[smiley=smokin.gif]

Title: Re: Trojan attack takes files hostage
Post by Redneck on May 25^th, 2005, 10:24pm

If you gonna run Internet Explorer get this. kills the hell outta trojans, etc.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

Title: Re: Trojan attack takes files hostage
Post by Gator on May 26^th, 2005, 12:26am

on 05/25/05 at 20:03:49, purpleydog wrote:

Another reason not to use Internet Explorer.

http://www.theregister.com/2005/05/25/trojan_hostage_attack/

Firefox...
No pop-ups either.Blocks them all.

http://www.mozilla.org/

[smiley=smokin.gif]

Common sense goes a long way towards keeping your system clean.

1. Install a virus scanner and keep it up to date with the latest definition files.

2. Do not open attachments in e-mail unless you're expecting one. Even if you get an attachment from a friend or family member, you might want to send them an e-mail asking if they sent you an attachment. Their computer may be infected and sending out viruses without the owners' knowledge.

3. Never click on a pop-up, just close them with the little X in the top right corner. Some of the pop-ups look a lot like Windows generated messages, right down to what looks like a "Close Window" button. Don't click that button - use the little X in the top right corner or better yet, use ALT F4.

4. Programs like Kazaa have data mining software built into them and many of the files you would download using these P2P programs are infected with malware, tracking programs, data mining programs and viruses.

5. Programs like Ad-aware check for all the bandwidth sucking, data stealing little crapware programs and helps get rid of them. Try one.

Personally, I've never really had any trouble with IE, but I downloaded FireFox just the same and have been using it for a couple months. There are some cool features in it. I love the tabbed browsing. The pop-up blocking is cool, too. I use some of the little add-ons as well, like the Countdown Clock and Forecast Fox. I've had to make a few tweaks to get things working right, but there are still a couple things driving me crazy:

1. FireFox doesn't always load all the graphics. Sometimes I have to refresh the screen several times to get a graphic to load (assuming I know there's one there in the first place) and then sometimes they just don't load.

2. Highlighting a section of text and using the IMG and other tags doesn't work. The tags always go to the last line of the post which means I end up manually typing them in. What a pain.

Anyone using FireFox that knows how to tweak these things out please let me know.

Overall - FireFox rules over IE.

Title: Re: Trojan attack takes files hostage
Post by Opus on May 26^th, 2005, 2:24pm

on 05/26/05 at 00:26:31, Gator wrote:

Common sense goes a long way towards keeping your system clean.

1. Install a virus scanner and keep it up to date with the latest definition files.

Avast (http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html) is a good one, it is free and unlike Norton it has daily updates.

2. Do not open attachments in e-mail unless you're expecting one. Even if you get an attachment from a friend or family member, you might want to send them an e-mail asking if they sent you an attachment. Their computer may be infected and sending out viruses without the owners' knowledge.

What! and stop adding to my virus collection?

3. Never click on a pop-up, just close them with the little X in the top right corner. Some of the pop-ups look a lot like Windows generated messages, right down to what looks like a "Close Window" button. Don't click that button - use the little X in the top right corner or better yet, use ALT F4.

Popups, what are they?

4. Programs like Kazaa have data mining software built into them and many of the files you would download using these P2P programs are infected with malware, tracking programs, data mining programs and viruses.

Use BitTorrent (http://www.bittorrent.com/) or Limewire (http://www.limewire.com/english/content/home.shtml) instead.

5. Programs like Ad-aware check for all the bandwidth sucking, data stealing little crapware programs and helps get rid of them. Try one.

Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html) is good too.

Personally, I've never really had any trouble with IE, but I downloaded FireFox just the same and have been using it for a couple months. There are some cool features in it. I love the tabbed browsing. The pop-up blocking is cool, too. I use some of the little add-ons as well, like the Countdown Clock and Forecast Fox. I've had to make a few tweaks to get things working right, but there are still a couple things driving me crazy:

1. FireFox doesn't always load all the graphics. Sometimes I have to refresh the screen several times to get a graphic to load (assuming I know there's one there in the first place) and then sometimes they just don't load.

There are still sites that block Firefox, check out weighthingychers (http://www.weighthingychers.com/). Some image servers also block firefox, that is probably what you are seeing. Get the "User Agent Switcher" extension and change the ID to IE6 on XP and everything will probably work fine. Personally I try never to do this becouse I feel if they don't want Firefox then I don't want their images. I'm sure a lot of Firefox users run as IE6 on XP all the time making it look like there are less users. There was a time when sites blocked IE so really we can't complain.

2. Highlighting a section of text and using the IMG and other tags doesn't work. The tags always go to the last line of the post which means I end up manually typing them in. What a pain.

This seems to be a bug in YaBB, I started seeing this in the last update about 6 months ago. I did a search for it and found nothing. For now I just assemble the tag at the bottom and cut/paste it where I want it. I guess I should report it someday. Does the same problem happen in IE? Someday I will get around to installing IE and see how the other half lives.

Anyone using FireFox that knows how to tweak these things out please let me know.

Overall - FireFox rules over IE.

And Linux (http://distrowatch.com/) rules over Microsoft Windows ;;D

Opus/Paul [smiley=smokin.gif]

Title: Re: Trojan attack takes files hostage
Post by ExplodingEyeBall on May 26^th, 2005, 3:42pm

I'm with Gator on this.

I haven''t really had any problems with I.E. but I like FireFox better because of the tabs.

The only problem I've had with FireFox so far is that it has a tendancy to lock up when I have to open up a PDF file. It gets locked to the point that the program can't even be closed with task manager.

I saw something about what is already beeing called 'RansomWare' in the paper this morning. The people that were responsible got busted but I'm sure that someone will figure out a way to do it and get away with it.