Computer Viruses

[georgie]

I dunno about you lot but I never get any viruses on me 'puter (I'm obviously not speaking to tris- cos those Tranny sites he goes to are loaded with them.. erm... so I've heard... *cough* ). So I was thinking to myself "How do I know that my antivirus program is actually working?", there could be millions of the buggers there in the background eating my hard drive platters and pouring jam on my nice graphics card (I hear they can do that nowadays ya know), so in a moment of boredom I turned to google. "How do I know that my antivirus program is actually working?", I said to google. Google replied with many an answer but this one made me go "ooouuuu".

Creating the nicest virus on planet (well sort of)

* Fire up notepad
* Copy the following code and paste it into the notepad.

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

* Save it as test.com not test.txt to c: or desktop.

Now it turns out that my antivirus is working cos at that point a big scary screen popped up telling me the world was about to end but NOD32 stepped in, whisked the file off to a virus dungeon with sentries that go "Schnell" and "Nein" and averted disaster at the last second.
Phew, you lot were all in trouble there for a second without even knowing it.

Anywho, that helped pass about 3 minutes. Fun fun.

 

[- English -]

and if its notworking u get a virus and your computer will blow up in 10seconds RUN RUN ALREADY RUN!

 

[liloe]

I don't have a virus scanner…

Spoiler

…on my Mac

 

[old.Tohtori]

Only way to stop computer viruses is to use a f*cking condom(pun) when going about having sex with strange computers!

No i don't have experience in floppy drives, driver ports or microphone plugs or ANY of such "small dick" paraphernalia

 

[soze]

I do not use AV at home i have a firewall and do not install dodgey applications or open strange emails thats my AV Anti Spyware though i use that allot.

Thats a really cool trick though will need to remember that.

 

[Helme]

I don't have a virus scanner…

Spoiler

…on my Mac

Using a Mac doesn't mean you are safe, hell it took them less than 2 minutes to break into a Mac when they tried some month ago, I'd almost go as far as to say that PC's are way more safe than Mac's because they at the very least HAVE protection incase anything happens, which as you yourself say - most Mac users don't.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Hmm. I wonder if it could be applied, also, that because there are less macs, you're more likely to be attacked by someone then on a PC?

And i don't mean attacked by a pack of PC nerds 'cause you use a mac

 

[Helme]

Well the threat to PC's are absolutely higher, and will continue to be so for a few more years - but as Mac's popularity increases the over 20 year old "we are safe because we use Mac's" mentality most of its users have will most likely come back and bite them hard in the ass. It's really kind of like Sweden, we think we are safe due to our 200 year long neutrality, but if terrorist organizations(or whatever) decide to attack the west - you can be damn sure they aren't going to ignore a country that prides itself on not fighting back. It's like a free win.

Most PC users nowadays knows that the first thing you do on your Windows computer is replace the browser, possibly get some sort of script stopping service and get at the very least an anti-spyware program and antivirus. Some even go as far as to get software Firewalls.

 

[soze]

Macs are meant to be easier to hack but no one hacks them because the boring fuckers who use them have nothing worth taking

 

[Jupiter]

Ok so i dont have a 3 1/2" floppy drive so how do i use a boot disk?

 

[Helme]

USB sticks sometimes work, so do CD's. Depends on how old your computer is I think.

 

[echome]

I don't have a virus scanner…

Spoiler

…on my Mac

Same

But on my PC I got antivirus, anti spyware and a firewall... And that makes me a sad sad panda.

 

[liloe]

Well the threat to PC's are absolutely higher, and will continue to be so for a few more years - but as Mac's popularity increases the over 20 year old "we are safe because we use Mac's" mentality most of its users have will most likely come back and bite them hard in the ass. It's really kind of like Sweden, we think we are safe due to our 200 year long neutrality, but if terrorist organizations(or whatever) decide to attack the west - you can be damn sure they aren't going to ignore a country that prides itself on not fighting back. It's like a free win.

Most PC users nowadays knows that the first thing you do on your Windows computer is replace the browser, possibly get some sort of script stopping service and get at the very least an anti-spyware program and antivirus. Some even go as far as to get software Firewalls.

There is a bit more of a difference, though. OS X is a Unix based system and as such, you're required to use admin-mode when doing system-critical operations. So unless you're stupid ("oh, that cool internet program asks for my admin PW, let's type quickly"), you're much safer than a windows user. Yes, there is a thing like admin-mode in windows, but the pre-settings are usually shit and a lot of people don't bother changing that.

Also my mailaccount is virus-scanned by my provider, so I'm not concerned from that side aswell. Point is, most "dodgy" sites (although it's been a long time since I last downloaded some crack from strange sites and I don't surf for pron aswell) use the most basic IE/plugin loopholes.

Basically I protect my system by my actions, but if someone puts up a test site to show that my system is vulnerable, I will indeed do something and install a scanner, I'm always happy to learn new things =)

Also Unix systems don't simply execute stuff (the Solaris console - and I guess that counts for Unix/Linux aswell - even demands a ./ before starting an application). Same for Mac, if you downloaded things, you have to run through two steps to get your stuff working. So I'm really sorry, but if people are stupid enough to trust everything and just click for the sake of clicking, they just deserve it
Sux if you think you have something trustworthy, but at least it can't really kill your system normally.

 

[liloe]

Ok so i dont have a 3 1/2" floppy drive so how do i use a boot disk?

Go to the BIOS, set it to use USB on startup and there you go: Boot from a stick =) Or you can burn a boot-CD. You just have to set the boot order in your BIOS. Keep in mind that the FIRST device able to boot will be used, so if you want to boot from something that is not your HDD, then set the HDD to secondary or tertiary and set CD/USB as primary/secondary.

 

[soze]

There is a bit more of a difference, though. OS X is a Unix based system and as such, you're required to use admin-mode when doing system-critical operations. So unless you're stupid ("oh, that cool internet program asks for my admin PW, let's type quickly"), you're much safer than a windows user. Yes, there is a thing like admin-mode in windows, but the pre-settings are usually shit and a lot of people don't bother changing that.

User Account Controll is what your talking about in Vista and if you are a normal user your admins should make you use it it lets you know when stuff tries to install and change important files but also you can set them as a user so it will ask for a Admin password to apply the change. I would not see any PC of mine asking me everytime i install as a good thing my PC should do as i ask as i will not click on shite software or dodgey links

 

[liloe]

User Account Controll is what your talking about in Vista and if you are a normal user your admins should make you use it it lets you know when stuff tries to install and change important files but also you can set them as a user so it will ask for a Admin password to apply the change. I would not see any PC of mine asking me everytime i install as a good thing my PC should do as i ask as i will not click on shite software or dodgey links

I'm a bit mistrusting and so even something that automatically tries to install itself has to ask ^^

Thing is: If you have an admind, you're more likely to not have a security issue, but we're talking about home users here =)

 

[Chronictank]

hehe f-secure wouldnt even let me save the file