Be Very Careful With The Recent Firefox Update! Drive by download exploit abound

[tgp1994 0]

Portableapps has ClamWin antivirus. You should use it each time you come back home after having plugged your jumpdrive in a computer.

Wait, since ClamWin is portable, would you keep it in your flash disk? I think you'd be infected the moment the flash drive is plugged in :\

[vhortex 1]

Does not fall under your list And what can someone do with my IP? Sure, they could test my computer for an attack, but of what type?
P.S. I never clicked anything in the website. I don't fall for things like recreated UIs, I was merely looking at the front of the website to judge its appearance.

When people will do an attack, they won't be getting your ISP's info instead they will see your computers info and which port they can use. There are 12000 possible attack ports and none was closed as you never used any antivirus. On visiting any website, clicking a link is optional as there are 300 ways to trick your browser and another 400+ ways to trick windows to update. There are also more than 3000 hidden Iframe hijack methods that every browser falls victim and what they do is certainly not good for you.

Knowing your IP is like letting everyone to leave a file on your computer. What kind of attack or damage they can do?
Every damage that you can think falls on the list including having someone knowing everything that you do with your computer.

This is the reason why it is a requirement to have a working antivirus to shield you to at least a portion of this things. This is also the same reason why antivirus makers are earning millions and even billions of dollars. There are even words spreading around the internet that these antivirus companies also release new strains of virus just to be on top of the chain.

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Just to put an example on what are the possibilities of an attack/damage:

On one of the calls I get working as an Application Developer / System Admin, one of the machines on our satellite office operates on its own with no one on the computer terminal. The computer terminal was found fully infected by a "zombie" software and the attacker have full access for more than 2months. The attacker only recently found out that the computer was attached to a machine and was trying to figure out what machine it is.

The computer lost all admin access and the sole admin on that computer was the attacker. All information stored on the machine was stolen even the mails are being downloaded, compacted and being download by the attacker using FTP commands. Imagine a desktop computer terminal now have a working FTP server, a Working Email server, a linux bash shell under CGWIN http://www.cygwin.com/ and it is hosting a viral download server. The same computer can't be even unplugged on the internet since it will refuse to boot.

Local tracing yields a long list of warez site visits logged on the proxy server (this proxy gives 4 dedicated IP from the ISP on a pass thru method, it's sole purpose to is to log access). The antivirus server also list thousands of viral alert and the missing antivirus software. They removed the antivirus software we installed before shipping the computers to them since they feel 100% secure that windows won't get infected as long as it is being updated.

Good thing is that the persons on that office only maintains a glass smashing machine to destroy defective products and to prepare them for delivery back to the supplier for recycling.

[vhortex 1]

Another example happened on a company near ours.

 

 

On the industrial zone where I work, every business complex maintains their own power generating building. One sunny day, we get a red alert that 2 50mega watts power generator machine is about to blow and they cannot stop it. The computer maintaining them are full loaded with antivirus and monitoring was down. These generators are overheating without any technician knowing it.

 

We are then forced to stop work and immediately pack our 600 barrels of 2-propanol (modified Isopropyl alcohol)

 

The defective generators won't affect us but the heat radiation it will cause if it blows will ignite our stock of 2-propanol (IPA).

 

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Another one happened on a user doing banking on his computer, his computer got infected by opening an email and letting it load an image that is binded with a virus (see "virus images on email"). His entire deposit got wiped out and transfered to a bogus bank account on the other side of the globe.

 

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A friend it Vietnam had his harddisk entirely useless as the virus he got from viewing a shaddy website issued a random disk write and low level format on random disk sectors. All his research files and work files got lost.

 

 

The list is still pretty long, infact you may be wasting at least a month knowing all the common possible damage it can cause you. And this all happen due to an absence of an antivirus and viewing or opening an email from shaddy website/persons.

[tgp1994 0]

Hm, that is pretty bad. It is a good thing that all inbound ports are blocked by my router unless specifically opened by a program on my side.Fortunately, it turns out that my ISP gives out a version of Norton 360 for free, so I think I ought to take advantage of that :)Thanks.

[zenia 0]

Another example happened on a company near ours.

 

 

On the industrial zone where I work, every business complex maintains their own power generating building. One sunny day, we get a red alert that 2 50mega watts power generator machine is about to blow and they cannot stop it. The computer maintaining them are full loaded with antivirus and monitoring was down. These generators are overheating without any technician knowing it.

 

We are then forced to stop work and immediately pack our 600 barrels of 2-propanol (modified Isopropyl alcohol)

 

The defective generators won't affect us but the heat radiation it will cause if it blows will ignite our stock of 2-propanol (IPA).

 

**************************

 

Another one happened on a user doing banking on his computer, his computer got infected by opening an email and letting it load an image that is binded with a virus (see "virus images on email"). His entire deposit got wiped out and transfered to a bogus bank account on the other side of the globe.

 

**************************

 

A friend it Vietnam had his harddisk entirely useless as the virus he got from viewing a shaddy website issued a random disk write and low level format on random disk sectors. All his research files and work files got lost.

 

 

The list is still pretty long, infact you may be wasting at least a month knowing all the common possible damage it can cause you. And this all happen due to an absence of an antivirus and viewing or opening an email from shaddy website/persons.

A comment to this post is written in this topic about the need of making a back up.

 

Topic about backups