Re: OT: New Virus?
 

You forgot the first step....have a $1000000.00 trust fund to fall back on. Second step would be a mother on the board of the largest computer company at the time.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

Actually this worm hit a lot of large corporate sites, but they will never let you know due to the PR hit. Working where I do I know my workplace was hit, and since we deal with a lot of other large corporations, I know that they were hit. Luckily we stopped in the user lan before it got into real production.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

In the last year I have been issued at least six replacement visa cards, visa check cards, and one master card because of worms and hacking successes at banks and bank reciept processing centers. They tell you about it weeks after it happens. Only once was my checking and saving account plunder, and that was back in Nov 2002 and that is still under investigation.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

I guess the question would be: Why were you hit?

WSUS is free, and it manages patches quite well.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

Ask the security guys, I work on the application side not in the general IT side.

But to be honest it's more complex in a big IT shop because there are a ton of applications that have to be carefully tested before patches can be applied. The IT folks have Altiris to push down patches, so that isn't a problem, but you can't patch a machine that is running a lot of complex applications that can vary from in house to 3rd party without certification. This can take awhile, and when they have immediately patched in the past it's actually done more harm then just pushing the patches down immediately.

I am sure there are ways to speed the process up, but not that much.

The real solution is to stop putting mission critical applications on wintel, which is something we are slowly moving towards http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

You answered my question. Altiris is not worth what it costs if it was bought at 50% off. Our parent agency runs it and they were hit. We passed on it and were not touched. And we manage a 100+ more systems with a 1/3 of the staff they have. The best thing we have done is to put an update test team in place. We test patches and usually push them out in <24 hours. The test team has a person from the network staff, one of the programmers, and the DBA. We are usually done in a few hours. We also have eliminated a lot of the off brand systems and apps that were in place to basically allow people use what they personally preferred. All of the db’s are on SQL now, and the systems are all x86 with 2k, 03 or XP with the exception of one mainframe that still runs UNIX. [The dinosaur that refuses to die. And keeps two programmers plus a computer operator employed doing basically nothing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif ] We expected to save some man hours, but we were pleasantly surprised at how much money we saved last physical year. Even though MS runs us about $35 a seat, we were spending $1000s just to keep a few people happy. And we used to spend 10s of thousands on Citrix so that we could keep older systems in service, along with more $1000s to maintain service contracts on same older hardware. And never had any money left in the budget for new hardware. Now we replace it as it goes out of warrantee and spend 0 on service contracts and 0 on Citrix. We actually had money left over to purchase spares at the end of last year. Third party support apps and service contracts are vampires that suck the life out of networks. But it’s hard to convince people that they can do it better and more cost effectively in house.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

Well, there is linux and MacOS is gunna be x86 soon. They already have a beta running on intel cpu's.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

I haven't had any experience with Linux. I suppose I should start looking into it. It has a bad rep with being able to run Windows programs. Maybe someone more familiar with it can explain that? As far as MacOS, I guess it's back to Apple. The last one I had was an Apple IIGS. It was one of the best computers I've ever had. Apple shot themselves in the foot when they stopped the II line! Oh Well, so few choices left... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

Linux has difficulties running Windows programs because Windows programs are made with the (necessary) assumption that Windows will be present. Any program much beyond a simple "hello world" (and even most of those.....) make calls to Operating System routines (mostly for dealing with shared recources - memory, disk calls, the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers... all the hardware, really). Windows Operating System routines are different from Linux Operating System routines. In order to run a Windows program (which assumes the presence of Windows Operating System routines to call) on Linux, you must first convince Linux to pretend to have all of the Windows Operating System routines that the program uses.

Enter Wine (Sourceforge project for Wine). Wine is an attempt to do just that - convince Linux to fake the Windos OS routines, not by emulating them, but by either replicating them entirely (and independantly) or making wrappers for Linux OS routines that do the same stuff.

Wine is still in Alpha, unfortunately.

Re: OT: New Virus?
 

Apple was hit this week also. All OS's can be attacked, it just that windows is a bigger target. Windows runs on 90%+ of the worlds PC's.