[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Rob Beardwrote: > I can't remember if this was posted before, but it's an article about how a > London council was infected with Conficker costing them lots of money to > sort out (plus lots of lost revenue in fines). Their solution? > > Upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. Yeah great. I won't go into the debate whether if everyone used Linux there'd be fewer viruses, but if someone can make so much damage by plugging in an infected USB stick, then something more serious is the matter than "wrong operating system" or even "viruses are just really bad". Why did the IT security policy enable that person able to plug the infected stick in the first place? Incidentally, I discovered a copy of Conficker on one of our USB sticks today. It turns out to have been infected at the print shop I took it last week to have them print a document. Thankfully, I could safely investigate the files on Linux and upload them to VirusTotal -- which is how I discovered it was Conficker -- but then I called the print shop, to warn them, and they weren't the least concerned. They do run an antivirus program they sad, but have weakened its settings because, you know, all these warnings about files are so annoying. My suggestion that they might thus infect the network of a big customer resulted in a "such is life" reply. Martijn. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html