[gonzo]

Originally posted by girlgeek@Oct 19 2003, 06:17 PM
It's a real problem, especially for home users. Blaster caused over $2 billion dollars of damage last month. Remember that Parson kid they picked up in Minnesota? When they found him, he owned about 6,000 boxes. That's a lot of machines. Also, it took down a DMV office, I think in Maryland. Many smaller businesses were affected as well.

Microsoft's code is so buggy, that it doesn't surprise me that your friends are making big dollars in this field. As far as the viruses go, you saw the story that was posted a few days ago about the kid who was using machines affected by trojans, as ftp servers. They use them to DDoS other machines, store their tools and games, and other activities that leech off your bandwidth. Most of the time you don't even know they are there. That is the problem. These script kiddies with too much time on their hands, are releasing all kinds of destructive code and it is a pain to clean up.

I spend a great deal of my time counseling people on fixing their computers and cleaning up these messes, when it could have all been prevented with a few basic pieces of software and hardware. At home, I run Linux, OS X and Windows. I am always attacking my own machines, to make sure they are secure. Not everyone can do this, so I try to inform as many people as possible when this stuff becomes available.

You've been quiet this weekend, any fun stories to share?

I totally agree. The sheer mangnatured of patching nad cleaning and etc etc is mind boggling. I spent the entire early morning at the data center cleaning up our NT servers having cases of blaster and welchia on them. I didnt get all of them either. Keep in mind that a lot of these machines have been powered off for 3 months or more. We got new video projects spining up so I had to turn them on and start getting ready.

I usually share all my good stories on my BLOG. See your not the only one that has one. Im a couple of weeks behind on it as well. Last weekend we had a world famous 'hacker" of sorts show up along with his tech celebrity girlfriend...and I had been stirring the shit on that one so I had to follow it thru. Then they decided that I was indeed fucked up enough to drive this battlecruiser called Oprano so Ive been busy with that ever since.

Ill message you the blog url once I've updated it right now I hear the Godfather Serge calling my name. So Ive got to find a telephone booth to call him from about that thing...y'know.

How about you...have you picked out your ballroom outfit? More importantly is it going to be a thong or bikini?