|
|
 |
|
|
Pages: 1
Users ...
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)
Posted by: bLaCkOuT
WHY must users feel obligated to open a virus email that they've been warned about a couple hours earlier. Why?!
Bah, we got infected by WORM_FRIENDGRT.B yesterday and the source just happened to be our field rep on-site guy so all the field reps got it (they have a computer iq of neg 1 million which means they opened it).
Atleast it was contained to about 10 people 
Why!? Argh.
Ok, I feel better now, back to work
Posted by: SKYHN
Active virus protection is a good way to prevent that sort of thing. That is if its updated often.
Posted by: Bored
There is no protection from stupidity. Of all the calls at work about 33% are AOL related, and ver 8.0 has more kernel32.dll related bugs than any program has a right to have. As much as 15% of all calls are hostile code related, "Sorry Ma'am, we don't support viruses. Contact the folks at Norton". Another 25% are people downloading obscure amatuer programs and hacks that have bad code that screws up their system.
Posted by: Shalome
Wasn't one of the slogan's on last year's OTS shirts... "There is no patch for stupidity, but we'll find you a workaround!"? 
Posted by: The_Turks(ff7)
after i download something i always scan it and then extract it(i dunno if that helps or not). my friend downloaded some hacks for diablo 1 and got a virus that completely wiped out his comp. I laugh at him for his stupidity...
whatever happened to the tshirt thread, i still wanted one....
Posted by: bLaCkOuT
Well, the problem was it wasn't really a virus'd email. It was an email that had a link to a "web card" that when the link was followed through, installed a virus (even though they shouldn't be able to install stuff at all). So, I can't say I blame them ... a friendly email greeting card from a friend doesn't seem all that suspicious ... but opening it up after an announcement made me mad.
I just got a VM message about one of our field reps responding to the email I sent him which included prolific phrases such as delete immediately, do not open it, yada yada, yada ... The messege comes back, "Well I tried to get into it and open the page but it isn't opening up for some reason. Am I doing something wrong?" @$%@
Posted by: bLaCkOuT
The irritating thing:
We've been running Office Scan from Trend Micro for some time now (The same people that do Housecall, a free online virus scanner). We update the pattern file every two days or something like that, the last one was the day before. Housecall picked up the virus, but Office Scan didn't
Posted by: Daedleus
I don't open any attachments or emails unless I can tell from the "From" line and "Subject" line as to who it's from. If I don't know, I delete it. I also don't use the preview pane in OE, and I have my OE-integrated Hotmail accounts set to only download the headers. But then again, I'm a technician and I know these things.
The average user doesn't, and therein lies the dilemma. They see a message that seems friendly and inconspicuous, and swallow the ruse hook, line, and sinker, like they were intended to. It comes down to common sense really, and when you say you gave explicit instructions that were not followed, I know exactly how you feel.
Sometimes it's simply a case of ID10T (eye-dee-ten-tee) error.
On a somewhat related note, I think Norton (any software suite) is worthless. It ends up doing more harm then good. I think they could make it much more intuitive as far as default configuration settings, because the whole "modifying settings within the users email client results in loss of email connectivity" is getting really old. The addition of a firewall adds more fun to the mix. Then again, it's not our bag, so we just send them off to Norton to get it configured.
It's the people that don't know much about computers and how they function that get suckered into these "security" issues and end up paying for software that does more harm than good; all because of poor setup on the AV software developer's part.
Posted by: bLaCkOuT
I use Earthlink's webmail as my email software, not only because I like being able to check it anywhere, but there's no HTML. I dunno if its a setting or not, don't care really since I prefer non-HTML, but its great.
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
Virus scanners are worthless. Good common sense is all you need.
Posted by: Outlaw
 Quote:
Originally posted by Ion Silverbolt
Virus scanners are worthless. Good common sense is all you need.
|
Hmm... I got a virus scanner, what does that make me?
Posted by: scorpion_gold
Quote:
Originally posted by Ion Silverbolt
Virus scanners are worthless. Good common sense is all you need.
|
where can i get some of this? is it expensive? 
Posted by: Shalome
Common sense is terribly expensive. The price is usually "experience" and "learning things the hard way."
However, stupidity and ignorance are far more expensive in the long run.
Posted by: justinious
Quote:
Originally posted by Shalome
The price is usually "experience" . . .
|
What if you don't have enough experience points to spend?
Posted by: scorpion_gold
then go level up, duh.
Posted by: Bored
Quote:
Actually you get experience for a RELOAD. 
Posted by: Null Actor
Sometimes intelligence isn't even a factor when it comes to email based viruses. A lot of people just don't give any weight at all to things like that.
For instance, when I was still at my last job, one day our sysadmin sent an email to everyone that went something like this:
"To everyone:
There has been a drastic increase in the rate of email viruses, and I urge everyone to take caution and heed any warnings of such. The results of having a virus loose within the company could be disasterous. A lot of these viruses work by sending an attachment along with the email. As long as you don't run the attachment, you should be fine.
At this point in time I'd like to take a moment to warn you about a new virus that's going around. It's highly destructive, and also opens a backdoor to your computer on the internet. I need not remind you folks how bad it would be all our hard work were to leak out on to the internet. The name of this worm is joke.333.win32, and it is spread as an email attachment with the name "joke.exe". If you see this file - DO NOT RUN IT. Promptly delete the email, and ask a sysadmin to virus scan your machine over the network to be sure. "
Attached to the email was a file. The file was Joke.exe.
When the file was run, it gave a nasty message that included some fun hacker-like text that gave people a nice nasty scare.
When all was said and done, something 40% of the company ran the executable, despite the warning. The sysadmins all had a good laugh, since it was a fake, but they also scared the piss out of most people.
Posted by: redwench
the really scary thing is that 40% of people ran it, even though the warning was attached. people are idiots. doom.
Posted by: redfalconx55
this reminds me of an article i read in the newspaper. I read that a man found a new virus, by activating it (duh), and it wiped all his records for his home business. the virus was an e-mail with the subject, "DONT OPEN THIS! IT IS A VIRUS!" and naturally he opened it. The virus ate all his files and sent the computer into total-overhaul of the recycle bin. All was destroyed.
|
|
|
|
|
