Thursday, September 9, 2010

The new virus that I've been encountering

Okay, finally home after a long day of dealing with sheer idiocy at school (won't talk about that here, read my other blog)

So I found out why all of these people have been calling me about that annoying rogue anti-virus when I turned on the news. People will never learn.

MSNBC writes

A new virus based in e-mails with the subject line "Here You have" began running rampant Thursday, hitting corporate America hard.

So far, the virus has already been sighted at ABC/Disney, Google, Coca Cola and NASA, several individuals with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap. Comcast was forced to shut down its e-mail servers entirely after being hit, a spokesperson said on Twitter.

...
E-mails that carry the virus contain a link that encourages readers to click on a PDF document file. But rather than a PDF, the file contains a Windows script that transmits a virus and spams the entire contact list of the person who opened the file.

For those of you that don't know what this means, and how you can stop yourself from getting it I'm going to tell you and give you a few simple safe rules of thumb to follow while browsing:

1. EVEN IF IT IS YOUR FRIEND SENDING YOU A "pdf or word document" PUT YOUR MOUSE OVER THE FILE LINK AND LOOK AT THE EXTENSION (pdf, doc, docx, etc.) If it says PDF or docx, you're good to go.

2. Stop clicking those damned pop-ups. You are not going to win the lottery from clicking one, I promise.

3. "But I don't want to pay for an Anti-virus!" is the most retarded thing I've ever heard. Download Avira AntiVir, it's free and in my personal opinion and in the opinion of many others it has been the current leading antivirus for awhile now, better than your beloved nortons and mcafees.

Pretty simple, browse smart and stay safe.

Let me know what other free alternative anti-viruses you recommend, drop me a comment and I'll check em out and let you know what I think.

27 comments:

  1. I've had some pretty bad malware in my time, its awful when it happens :(

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  2. Man, I used to have to work on malware for our customers all the time. Used to write tutorials for them... they still never learn! Good post though bro.

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  3. "best anti-virus = common sense"

    This.

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  4. Yeah, I heard there was a new virus out today that was spreading like wildfire, didn't hear too much about it. Thanks for the info.

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  5. Pop-ups are like Pringles though, I can't stop..

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  6. The best is common sense. But backround downloaders exploiting flash is always bound to happen.

    I use ESET

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  7. I use Vipre. It runs pretty good. But dang I'm bound to open an email that says "Here you have" if it is from someone I recognize :( Hope I don't get that

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  8. Yup, browse smart stay safe pretty much sums it up.

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  9. I use Avast and MSE + common sense...

    but as far as I'm aware, nod32 and kaspersky are the best. What do you take on that?

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  10. Thansk for the heads up. I use AVP..

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  11. as long as people are like they are, we will never be out of business :)

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  12. I don't know about Avast. Sometimes it works grea, and sometimes it just sucks.
    I'm under Bit Defender right now, and it rocks. The best i've seen so far, but it's not free.
    Avira comes second in my opinion. It's so paranoid that you can't feel unsecured :)

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  13. i like my nortons. don't talk shit. lol

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