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Install that important patch



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 13th, 2003, 10:38 AM
FLORIAN bACIU
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Default Install that important patch

  #2  
Old October 13th, 2003, 11:17 AM
Chrissy
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted
the miccrosoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML.

If you do this then the people who come here and thing that
these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they
are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install
them because they end up sending viruses to others who
post here.

Chrissy.


  #3  
Old October 13th, 2003, 12:29 PM
Keith Willshaw
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT


"Chrissy" wrote in message
...
Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted
the miccrosoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML.


They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone
else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room

If you do this then the people who come here and thing that
these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they
are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install
them because they end up sending viruses to others who
post here.

Chrissy.



Microsoft have made it crystal cleat that the never post
or mail patches in this way, that said there's a cardinal
rule you should follow with usenet.

NEVER NEVER load any program thats posted on ANY
usenet forum no matter how respectable it seems.

Keith


  #4  
Old October 13th, 2003, 12:47 PM
Chrissy
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

Keith Willshaw wrote

Chrissy wrote
Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted
the microsoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML.


They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone
else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room



They can actually. Moderated groups are groups which have
a person controlling what is and is not posted. The creator of
a newsgroup can set up rules as to what can and cannot be put
on that group - at least that was my understanding when I looked
at setting one up. They can definitely specify that no attachments
can be posted but I think they can also remove posts which they
want to and this can be done automatically.


If you do this then the people who come here and thing that
these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they
are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install
them because they end up sending viruses to others who
post here.

Chrissy.



Microsoft have made it crystal cleat that the never post
or mail patches in this way, that said there's a cardinal
rule you should follow with usenet.

NEVER NEVER load any program thats posted on ANY
usenet forum no matter how respectable it seems.


But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the
people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to
learn often come here to get answers to their questions.
With the number of people I have heard of who are getting
the virus which is being posted to these groups many times
a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups,
I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems.

Chrissy.


  #5  
Old October 13th, 2003, 01:24 PM
Keith Willshaw
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT


"Chrissy" wrote in message
...
Keith Willshaw wrote

Chrissy wrote
Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted
the microsoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML.


They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone
else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room



They can actually. Moderated groups are groups which have
a person controlling what is and is not posted. The creator of
a newsgroup can set up rules as to what can and cannot be put
on that group - at least that was my understanding when I looked
at setting one up. They can definitely specify that no attachments
can be posted but I think they can also remove posts which they
want to and this can be done automatically.


Yes but these ARENT moderated groups.


If you do this then the people who come here and thing that
these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they
are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install
them because they end up sending viruses to others who
post here.

Chrissy.



Microsoft have made it crystal cleat that the never post
or mail patches in this way, that said there's a cardinal
rule you should follow with usenet.

NEVER NEVER load any program thats posted on ANY
usenet forum no matter how respectable it seems.


But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the
people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to
learn often come here to get answers to their questions.


Sorry but this is a lesson they have to learn if they wish
to use Usenet. Usenet is by definition a dsitributed
medium with no central control.

With the number of people I have heard of who are getting
the virus which is being posted to these groups many times
a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups,
I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems.

Chrissy.



They are being posted to lots of groups which are nothing
to do with microsoft and also sent out by email. Yes you
can prevent postng of ALL attachments to a newsgroup but
that is rather limiting and prevents people from attaching
legitimate stuff. Its surely far better to set up your reader not to
download binaries if thats what you want.

I'm not in favour of dumbing down, especially in newsgroups
targetted at developers who may be expected to be a little
more sophisticated than the average user.

I suggest you cut down the crossposting if you reply
I only read microsoft.public.excel.programming

Posting to this many groups is frankly impolite, if you
want to say something to microsoft send an email.

Keith


  #6  
Old October 13th, 2003, 07:28 PM
Harlan Grove
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

"Chrissy" wrote...
...
Keith Willshaw wrote

...
They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone
else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room


They can actually. Moderated groups are groups which have
a person controlling what is and is not posted. The creator of
a newsgroup can set up rules as to what can and cannot be put
on that group - at least that was my understanding when I looked
at setting one up. They can definitely specify that no attachments
can be posted but I think they can also remove posts which they
want to and this can be done automatically.

...

While you're mostly correct about how moderated newsgroups work (moderators are
gate keepers who review potential postings before they're propagated as
newsgroup postings - this can be automated, but the rules would be simplistic),
it doesn't alter the fact that Keith's correct - these newsgroups are *NOT*
moderated. As long as they're not, discussion about what could be done if they
were is idle speculation.

Also, FWLIW, once a message is admitted to a moderated newsgroup, it's
propagated like any other ng message to all NNTP servers that carry the ng.
There's nothing moderators can do to delete ng messages at that point - it's
entirely up to the ISPs to purge messages from their NNTP servers.

But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the
people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to
learn often come here to get answers to their questions.
With the number of people I have heard of who are getting
the virus which is being posted to these groups many times
a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups,
I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems.


Not necessarily. It's far more likely that there are lurkers (people who read
these ngs but seldom if ever post) who have infected systems.

It's a trade-off. If you want to use a medium in which Joe Bob's dumb uncle can
spread the next virus to millions of other PCs because the medium offers
benefits that you perceive are greater than the risks, fine. If not, don't use
it. As a third alternative, only use non-Windows boxes to browse the internet -
none of the latest bugs affects anything other than Windows. If you were using a
Linux box and using a maintenance service to keep current with security updates,
you'd have been unaffected by Blaster, SoBig, Swen, etc. Ditto for FreeBSD,
OS/2, Mac OS, Solaris, yada yada yada.

Given the repeated waves of viruses, it's pretty obvious that new users just
won't stop doing stupid things on the internet. Learn how to cope.

--
Never attach files.
Snip unnecessary quoted text.
Never multipost (though crossposting is usually OK).
Don't change subject lines because it corrupts Google newsgroup archives.
  #7  
Old October 13th, 2003, 11:15 PM
Chrissy
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

Harlan Grove wrote
"Chrissy" wrote...


But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the
people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to
learn often come here to get answers to their questions.
With the number of people I have heard of who are getting
the virus which is being posted to these groups many times
a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups,
I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems.


Not necessarily. It's far more likely that there are lurkers (people who read
these ngs but seldom if ever post) who have infected systems.


That is simply not provable and almost certainly not true. If someone
is a lurker then they are most likely to be interested in MS stuff specifically
or computers generally. They are then more likely to be some what knowledgeable
about computers and thus less likely to have a virus.

Once a gain - the people with virus infections are likely to be the less
well informed - the guy who is new to computers and has not yet learnt
about viruses and how easy they are to get and how easy they are to
avoid.


It's a trade-off. If you want to use a medium in which Joe Bob's dumb uncle can
spread the next virus to millions of other PCs because the medium offers
benefits that you perceive are greater than the risks, fine. If not, don't use
it. As a third alternative, only use non-Windows boxes to browse the internet -


I use ONLY MS Windows boxes to browse the internet and will continue to do so.

none of the latest bugs affects anything other than Windows. If you were using a
Linux box and using a maintenance service to keep current with security updates,
you'd have been unaffected by Blaster, SoBig, Swen, etc. Ditto for FreeBSD,
OS/2, Mac OS, Solaris, yada yada yada.


yada yada yada alright. All those systems WERE affected to the same extent mine
was. I have NEVER had a virus infection and I doubt that I ever will. I will continue
to get mail from people who do have viruses on their machines. The current problem
I had did not affect my computer at all. It did however affect the mail server which
hosts my domain - a Unix box. The affect was that it threw a spaz when I got
250MBytes of mail an day. No security updates would help that. Their system is
set up to have limits on disk usage and if I approach that limit they e-mail me but
continue to let me use more. The limit I have for each users mail box is 20 MBytes
but I was using 69MBytes at one stage - I had turned off my computer to add new
hardware so had not downloaded mail for about 15 mins. When I tried to get mail
next their system kept saying that it could not allocate enough space for a temp
folder so mail would not be deleted from the server. That meant that the mail
was not marked as received and I ended up getting it about 10 times before I saw
the problem. I can afford the bandwidth but that bandwidth costs them.

It was a Unix system that was affected - no, they were not infected with the virus
but they were affected none the less.



Given the repeated waves of viruses, it's pretty obvious that new users just
won't stop doing stupid things on the internet. Learn how to cope.


I have learnt how to cope. What I don't do it make stupid statements to people
which implies that if they only used non MS OSs then they would not be affected
by viruses. This misinformation is misleading at best and probably dangerous if
said to novice users from someone they "think" knows what he is talking about.

Chrissy.


  #8  
Old October 14th, 2003, 12:20 AM
Harlan Grove
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

"Chrissy" wrote...
Harlan Grove wrote

...
Not necessarily. It's far more likely that there are lurkers (people who read
these ngs but seldom if ever post) who have infected systems.


That is simply not provable . . .


No less provable than your assertions.

. . . and almost certainly not true. If someone
is a lurker then they are most likely to be interested in MS stuff specifically
or computers generally. They are then more likely to be some what knowledgeable about computers and thus less likely to have a virus.


So we have an unprovable argument about whether it's posters (OPs only or
regular respondents) or lurkers who would most likely be infected. Since this
wave of 'Taste This...' faux patch advisories is restricted to Microsoft
newsgroups, it's almost certain these ngs are built into the virus code. If so,
it's quite possible that this virus has spread mostly by e-mail. It's well
within many programmers' abilities to create on-the-fly NNTP accounts, and it's
not exactly difficult to access msnews.microsoft.com. So it's actually unlikely
the deluge is due primarily to ng users - OPs, regular respondents or lurkers.
However, if it's mostly spread by Joe Bob's dumb uncle, bitching & moaning about
the problem in a newsgroup thread will be singularly unproductive.

It's a trade-off. If you want to use a medium in which Joe Bob's dumb uncle can spread the next virus to millions of other PCs because the medium offers
benefits that you perceive are greater than the risks, fine. If not, don't use
it. As a third alternative, only use non-Windows boxes to browse the
internet -


I use ONLY MS Windows boxes to browse the internet and will continue to do so.


Bully for you! My point is that, aside from e-mail and news *SERVERS* running
other OSs which are just doing their job of passing along everything they
haven't been instructed not to pass along, other OSs *can't* propagate these
viruses (unless users provide additional code to do so, and thus become virus
writers themselves). With regard to viruses, any other OS would be better for
novice users to use. Macs would be a better example.

none of the latest bugs affects anything other than Windows. . . .

...

Poor choice of wording on my part. Make that none affect any other *client* OS.
Servers are a whole different matter.

Given the repeated waves of viruses, it's pretty obvious that new users just
won't stop doing stupid things on the internet. Learn how to cope.


I have learnt how to cope. What I don't do it make stupid statements to people
which implies that if they only used non MS OSs then they would not be affected
by viruses. This misinformation is misleading at best and probably dangerous
if said to novice users from someone they "think" knows what he is talking
about.


Bon mots from such an expert! Any other OS *is* safer as a *client* OS right now
because almost all viruses are targetted as Windows. No prizes for guessing why
that might be. If other OSs were to gain significant market share, this
situation would change. However, all successful viruses (from the virus writers'
perspective) make use of low-level OS functionality to establish and spread
themselves. They can't work on multiple dissimilar OSs.

What I'm trying to point out (whether or not you're too dim to understand it) is
that there's one particular company that has a huge virtual bullseye painted on
it. Using that company's products is an implicit acceptance of becoming a
target. Most people who read these ngs accept that the benefits of using that
company's products mostly outweigh the risks (or their employers have made that
determination for them).

Using other OSs isn't practical for most people because doing so requires either
non-comodity hardware (bye, Mac OS) or nontrivial system administration skills
(ta ta, Linux/BSD/Unix). Unfortunately, the latter is also what's required to
make Windows machines safer for their owners/users and the whole internet
community. So nothing will change for the better any time soon.

1. Viruses won't abate as long as anyone can get an e-mail account if they can
pay for it.

2. Microsoft isn't going to moderate these newsgroups any time soon.

3. Most people only really learn from experience.

4. Complaining about this in ngs won't help (but there'll still be complainers).

--
Never attach files.
Snip unnecessary quoted text.
Never multipost (though crossposting is usually OK).
Don't change subject lines because it corrupts Google newsgroup archives.
  #9  
Old October 14th, 2003, 10:27 AM
Chrissy
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

Harlan Grove wrote

Bully for you! My point is that, aside from e-mail and news *SERVERS* running
other OSs which are just doing their job of passing along everything they
haven't been instructed not to pass along, other OSs *can't* propagate these
viruses (unless users provide additional code to do so, and thus become virus
writers themselves). With regard to viruses, any other OS would be better for
novice users to use. Macs would be a better example.


My point is that maybe MS OSs are more prone to viruses BUT all viruses
cost people in time and money regardless of OS used. If the cost of a
major hit by a virus is $10,000 by a company it really does not matter if it
was because their Windows machines were infected or the sheer volume of
data sent to their servers was too much and closed them down or the sys
admin team spent time repairing machines because of a hoax virus notice.
The bottom line takes into account more than the OS used.



Bon mots from such an expert! Any other OS *is* safer as a *client* OS right now
because almost all viruses are targetted as Windows. No prizes for guessing why
that might be. If other OSs were to gain significant market share, this
situation would change. However, all successful viruses (from the virus writers'
perspective) make use of low-level OS functionality to establish and spread
themselves. They can't work on multiple dissimilar OSs.

What I'm trying to point out (whether or not you're too dim to understand it) is
that there's one particular company that has a huge virtual bullseye painted on
it. Using that company's products is an implicit acceptance of becoming a
target.


But nothing about MY almost TOTALLY MS system is vulnerable BECAUSE it
is MS. All it takes to protect one's self are a few basic rules which one should
follow regardless of OS used.

My point, again, is the cost of viruses extends WAY beyond the actual infection
and can have a huge impact on a company even if they do not get the virus infection
on any of their computers.

You mentioned novice users - no wonder we have a problem when we put a
powerful tool in the hands of someone who does not know how to use it.
In many countries it would be considered inappropriate (or even illegal) for a
company to give a powerful tool (which could cause millions of dollars
damage) to a totally untrained staff member but it is done all the time with
computers then we wonder why so much mayhem is caused.

Chrissy.

Chrissy.


  #10  
Old October 14th, 2003, 12:10 PM
Keith Willshaw
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT


"Chrissy" wrote in message
...
Harlan Grove wrote


You mentioned novice users - no wonder we have a problem when we put a
powerful tool in the hands of someone who does not know how to use it.
In many countries it would be considered inappropriate (or even illegal)

for a
company to give a powerful tool (which could cause millions of dollars
damage) to a totally untrained staff member but it is done all the time

with
computers then we wonder why so much mayhem is caused.


Balderdash, it happens every time an employee jumps
into his car and every time a delivery van leaves the depot.

One of the leading causes of death in the western world
is the road tarffic accident and each death costs a
large sum of money as well as the human cost.

In any event any company with a half way competent IT manager
has firewalls and virus protection in place. The problem
with viruses is more the millions of home users with neither.

Keith


 




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