Posted on 06/01/2005 12:42:04 PM PDT by kerrywearsbotox
CHICAGO, June 1 (UPI) -- A computer enthusiast downloads the latest saucy Paris Hilton ad, from the Carl's Jr. chain, from the Internet and sends it to his office colleagues. Later that evening, his company finds 67 of its 92 computers have been invaded and are being controlled remotely by hackers, who have sent out a million e-mails touting Viagra, the male potency supplement.
"They did not realize that the 30 second clip had a virus attached to it," said Gregory Evans, chief executive officer of LIGATT Security, an IT consulting company in Los Angeles, referring to a client. By Gene Koprowski
Which is why I NEVER download anything at work.
Which is why the company should immediately assess the damages in most time, messages sent, and damage to it's good name and sue Viagra for reimbursement.
Pfizer had nothing to do with this.
This comes from the Grey and Black market thugs who advertise RX drugs via their spam 24/7/365.
A naive question: Can a computer be hijacked while the owner is using it?
Yes.
And windows-based computers seem to be much more succeptable to such things than better designed operating systems, like OSX and Linux.
(It's been an hour since the last OS religious war hasn't it?)
I think the hacker community enjoy exploiting holes that were reported 12 years and 4 OS versions ago. They also love thumbing their nose at Gates.
Its no secret that newer Windows OS's are basically upgraded versions of the older ones. What MS really needs is a complete code rewrite. At least then it will take some time for the hackers to find new holes!
Pfizer hired advertiser(s) to put their product name out there over various media, newspaper, commercials (TV, Cable,Radio), and internet. So their Advertisers are responsible. One of them hired these guys. And since that's a black hole, Pfizer does't feel any financial threat to stop it from happening, they will do nothing. But I bet you when they are suddenly faced with a cost of millions for what is ultimately their advertising thru illegitimate or illegal means, they'll get to the bottom of it.
And yes, overseas firms will be doing it too, but we'll cross that sticky bridge after we start on the domestic side.
Rant:
I did a contract for a software producing corporation (very well known in the corporate culture) a few years ago. The software produced by that company was a hog. The MS software used by that company was extremely expensive, insecure and had to be reinstalled on all machines (along with all of the data) every day (complete image reinstalls from backups). The name brand, proprietary, popular machines running all of the software there were extremely slow as compared to operations on generic machines. I was appalled at the vacuousness on display there (with robotic replays of stupid cliches, ad nauseum).
Most who call themselves "professionals" are quite incompetent, with huge extra costs paid by stubborn corporations for them and their preferred expensive, junky products.
All of their systems are wide open to crackers (not "hackers") who use the latest "visual," "studio," ".net," "enterprise" (begin Star Trek theme here), "professional" GUI crap to build viruses. Soon, I will only work for clients who want to have or already have good operating systems installed (not Linux, either).
But you forget that one of the selling points for Windows is it's legacy compatibility for older programs and software like computer games.
98% of the bulk mail spam my Spam blocker blocks is pharmaceutical products from name brand to generic.
Accusing all of the manufacturers of spamming any of these drugs is like saying all dentists want to do is remove our old dental crown work, put in new expensive crowns and go to the next sucker/patient. It has to be true with every dentist, since some dentists do this all the time.
Heh. Windows computers aren't more succeptable than Macs to attack. They are simply targeted far, far, far more often.
I have to run DosBox to get any Dos games to have any semblance of functionality, and even that takes a heck of a lot of work.
But, that's the price you pay for progress.
Right. But if you can put financial pressure on the manufacturer to insure that their distributors could identify those dentists and then financially pressure them to behave more professionally (by enlisting Health Insurers who they are billing at a higher rate than most), then the abuse will lessen greatly.
If not, then real-world experience would seem to indicate that your point is invalid.
Ok, if termites attack a forest, and 90% of the trees in the forest are fir and 8% are pine and 2% are cedar, (weird forest, eh?), what type of tree is going to get hit, statistically, the most? Fir? Just maybe?
And OSX has been out for how long? A year? Has it even been that long?
All I'm saying is that, if I'm a hacker/script jockey, I'm not going to waste my time working on an OS that very few people use. I'm going to spend my time on the OS that nearly everyone uses.
I'm not attacking Mac. Down, boy.
Statistically, you would expect at least one successful attack. To date, there are none. Call back when you have an actual example of a working worm in the wild on OSX.
See This Post for details of why the "we're so popular" argument is FUD
P.S. I'm not a Mac user. Never have been. I'm just sick of the microsoft FUD.
OSX has been out longer than Windows XP. It is currently on version 10.4.
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