New Virus hitting hard and furious!!!

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.html ^ | 08/11/03 | self

[livius]

You're welcome! The real thanks go to "Antigrok" (whoever he may be!) on the Tech Help Guy site.

[Woahhs]

I don't want to build a damn watch, I want to know what time it is.

I don't want a frickin' album...I just want the song!

[livius]

Glad this helped.

This virus ruined my day! (And I have all sorts of anti-virus protection...)

Don't forget to change the settings back after you reboot.

[kitkat]

Thanks for your input. Too bad my OSX doesn't have the same capabilities as Woahhs has.

Timesink, So I'm not alone with this problem huh? If you find the answer, PLEASE ping me.

[HAL9000]

But, how do I save the URL when I want to store pictures on my OSX?

The easiest way to save an image is click-and-drag it from Safari to the desktop.

To save the URL from Safari, hold down the "control" key and click on the image. (Or, if you have a two-button mouse, right-click on the image.) In the popup menu, choose "Open Image in New Window".

Then, from the new window, you can drag the web site icon (often a globe) to your desktop to save the URL - or you can bookmark it.

[Ramius]

Your Linksys router (depending on the model) may or may not have any hardware firewall capability.

As a general rule, I would recommend hiding ANY computer, regardless of OS, behind a decent firewall box of some kind. One good example might be the Netgear ProSafe series. They're not expensive, they are configurable and they'll do a pretty good job of hiding your home LAN from the Internet. Just remember to configure it away from the defaults, change the default passwords, and lock the outside world down, and you'll be in pretty good shape.

[avenir]

I was wondering why my computer was automatically shutting off!!!

I immediately went to msconfig and unchecked anything weird, did a search and found out about the prob. I downloaded the patch and unchecked "msblast.exe". My firewall is blocking port 4444 now since I put msblast into blocked apps mode.

Am I toast or did that stop the danger?

[the crow]

many thanks for the post bump

[Lloyd227]

Thanks Ramius, sounds like good advice.

In the meantime, I think I've located the feature on my router, under "filtering" it does allow up to 5 ports to be blocked and I've now done this.

[tortoise]

We filtered this off our fiber backbones several hours ago, before it really hit. Most ISPs now have an action plan for these alerts, which should go a long way towards squashing these things quickly and preemptively. We don't use an Windows boxes, but some people crossing our network do and we didn't want any of them getting out of hand.

It actually is disturbing how much nonsense network operators have to go through to keep Windows boxes from trashing the network through one form of stupidity or another.

[Hank Rearden]

Oh wait, I have a Mac.

You're lucky you're among the 2% of people who struggle with those damn Barbie's First Computer things - nobody bothers to go after the 2-percenters.

[Woahhs]

Too bad my OSX doesn't have the same capabilities as Woahhs has

Sure it does. Just hit option/mouse click and the menu will come up.

Take my word for it: Mac does everything.

Write me if you have any questions:)

[Elliott Jackalope]

I'm just looking up a couple of things on the internet, taking a break from a long session of editing video clips in Final Cut Pro, before taking the final video out and putting it on DVD via DVD Studio Pro. In the meantime I'm making some graphics for the DVD in Photoshop, and using some labeling software to put it all together. Everything works like a charm, I'm getting a lot of work done, and it's all being done on one of those "Barbie's First Computers" as you so sarcastically put it.

I used PC's for years. I use Apple computers now. I'd use a PC, but I'm not a masochist. No hard feelings though. You're already suffering enough by owning a PC.

[Timesink]

Timesink, So I'm not alone with this problem huh? If you find the answer, PLEASE ping me.

Pinging the Mac User list in case any of them has the answer. (Maccers: See post #54 and responses.)

Kitkat: Woahhs's OS X doesn't offer any functionality we don't also have, he was just proposing a manual workaround.

[FairOpinion]

I don't have a clue on how to do it on a router -- I should get one, but I don't have one yet. I am using software firewalls: Symantec's and Webroot.com's. there you just create and advanced rule and hopefully that takes care of it.

Hopefully someone knowledgeable will tell you how to do that on a router.

[Timesink]

Then, from the new window, you can drag the web site icon (often a globe) to your desktop to save the URL - or you can bookmark it.

You can do that, but it's still an incredibly clunky workaround that comes nowhere close to matching the functionality that existed in OS 9 and earlier, when simply dragging the graphic to the desktop (or downloading most any file in any way) automatically caused the orignating URL to be put in the Get Info box.

[FairOpinion]

If I do the normal go to the Windows Updatepage, let it scan my computer and download &install all the patches, would it install this one too, or do I still have to go and install it manually. (at the Window update it says there are no updates to install, recently I downloaded and installed a bunch of critical patches, which seem to be as numerous as multiplying rabbits).

[Timesink]

You're lucky you're among the 2% of people who struggle with those damn Barbie's First Computer things - nobody bothers to go after the 2-percenters.

Which is why we're sitting here talking about a minor user interface feature while everyone else is going crazy trying to protect their PCs from the Apocolypse of the Week.

Enjoy your 98%!

[Ramius]

Hopefully, it actually ought to offer you the ability to do it just the other way around. There should be a place where you can DENY all traffic by default, but have a list of allowed ports/protocols/hosts that ARE allowed to contact your network. Perhaps?