blaster, welchia, nachi

[martyr]

i saw a bunch of references to infections in a game discussions thread.

so here's my public service announcement, since many of us are probably called upon to cure ailed computers:

in windows XP, turn on the firewall on the NIC's connection. that will stop the spontaneous shutdowns.



to clear it, use stinger or something: http://it.erau.edu/blastpatch/blaster.htm

[dscytherulez]

Or try this

http://www.symantec.com/

[Cyanide]

Or use the free version of ZoneAlarm and a hardware firewall or router. These worms would not spread so well if people would just use a damn firewall all the time.

[Squick]

Originally Posted by Cyanide

Or use the free version of ZoneAlarm and a hardware firewall or router. These worms would not spread so well if people would just use a damn firewall all the time.

Did you hear MS is enabled the integrated firewall by default in XPSP2? I predicted that one the day I heard a DCOM "run anything on me please" worm was out in the wild.

It will certainly go a long ways to help, but throngs of people are going to be clueless why they can no longer host Counterstrike servers, and the CS boards will light up with people advising against installing SP2 because "it stops CS from working."

[Rbstr]

thats what us techies are for, to enlighten such people as to the real truth

[dscytherulez]

It's easy to drop the built in firewall though, takes like 2 seconds. Plus, now for home users that just use the internet for email and crap like that will be much more protected. Most average users don't even know what a firewall is, let alone how to enable one, or if they even have one.

[Squick]

Originally Posted by dscytherulez

It's easy to drop the built in firewall though, takes like 2 seconds. Plus, now for home users that just use the internet for email and crap like that will be much more pretected. Most average users don't even know what a firewall is, let alone how to enable one, or if they even have one.

Yeah, but many people will be completely uneducated, but will install SP2, no longer be able to host game servers, and instantly claim it is "buggy Microsoft software" and word will spread, and 10,000 people will refuse to install SP2 even though they were later told why it happened, and how to correct it. And 10,000 zombies on broadband can launch one incredible DDOS, just ask Steve Gibson of GRC.com what a few hundred can do!