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The Worm in the Apple...

Behrmon

Pr. Bear-Mon
This was inevitable. We were recently the victim of Cyber ransom, PC's were a mess while the Macs were unaffected. We will still be switching as many of the PCs to Macs as we can.
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
This was inevitable. We were recently the victim of Cyber ransom, PC's were a mess while the Macs were unaffected. We will still be switching as many of the PCs to Macs as we can.

Oddly enough, all but 1 of my computers run Linux, and any one of them can be affected as long as your connected to the internet. Unfortunately, that's just a fact of life. Just have to be smart about what you do.
 

player

New Member
Is there anything I can do to prevent infection? Would it encrypt my network NAS as well?

This is a good reason to have complete CURRENT clone copies of the drives. If the ransom virus hits, swap out the drives and carry on.
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Is there anything I can do to prevent infection? Would it encrypt my network NAS as well?

It depends on the particular piece of code. Some will infect mapped drives, some will even infect storages that aren't mapped to that specific computer as well.

Some target specific file extensions as well (typically your more common ones).


This is a good reason to have complete CURRENT clone copies of the drives. If the ransom virus hits, swap out the drives and carry on.

It's going to depend also where you have those cloned copies stored as well.
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Clone drives in desk drawer.

I really think the biggest thing to take away from this is that contrary to popular opinion, there really isn't a totally safe OS out there as long as it's connected out in the world.

Now, I do think some OSs have statistically more attacks then others due to their position in the market place, but Macs and even Linux (I'm a huge fan of Linux, so it's hard for me to type this, but as Linux Mint users are painfully aware of this very recently) are not totally secure.

The best thing that I can think of is to be smart in how you do things (in some ways I blame MS, at least partially).
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Absolutely correct that no OS is totally safe. The worm in question, is a pretty small one compared to most. It was downloadable in a program for Bit torrent, a sharing system, usually for less than legal music or movies.

This article has a fairly good explanation:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/new-os...=nl.e539&s_cid=e539&ttag=e539&ftag=TRE17cfd61

Ken Miller


Yes, I'm fairly aware of what Transmission is. It's been bundled with all my Linux systems and I uninstall after I get my OS up and running. Mainly because I don't use that platform of file sharing.

Bit torrent in of itself isn't illegal, it's what is shared on it is what may or may not be legal. Much like really anything else. It's how someone uses something that makes it questionable.

However, that wasn't really my point. Not what the vector of infection was, but the mere fact that there was an infection, when people believe that certain OSs are totally secure and aren't prone to these types of issues period.


It all depends on what you use these tools for or how carefully you monitor suspicious email activity in your inbox. That and the fact that Windows users typically tend to run their machines in full admin mode all the time has really added to one OS really being the target, especially considering it's market share.
 
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