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Re: [LUG] Sheffield hospitals infected by Conficker Worm

 

Rob Beard wrote:
>
> I think the policy that this trust had 
> though, i.e turning off all automatic updates was a really bad idea.

Turning it off clearly wasn't a smart move.

We were discussing Windows updating today - as we were investigating a
problem on a Windows machine - comparing revisions with another similar
box we found:

That the SUN Java updater wasn't automatically updating Java.
That Firefox hadn't automatically installed it's latest version.

The Java updater wasn't functioning.
On reboot the Java updater started functioning.

On reboot Microsoft Update suddenly found it had a load of updates to
install?! So presumably was also stalled.

So basically all the software updating tools on the two boxes relevant
to the problem at hand had failed to do their job on one or other of the
machines. Although ironically it was the new software (latest Java) that
caused the problem we were seeing.

Add to that me seeing Flash downgrade itself from a patched to an
unpatched version, and you see why Secunia report that ~98% of Windows
boxes are running code known to be vulnerable.

http://secunia.com/blog/37/

On the other hand I have servers needing patching, so I'm not one to
throw stones. But if 98% of people are getting it wrong, does that
suggest that there is a usability issue here? I'd love to see similar
stats for Debian boxes.

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