"....this Guy Steve really does know what he is talking about. The FBI use him as do the CIA and he been known to assist the Met Police."

ROFL - Sorry PPRuNe Pop but no one in the real IT community seems to take Steve Gibson very seriously.

But grc.com IS useful and SpinRite was once the marvel of the age (I loved it)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3695857.stm gives more information about the arrest of the little $hit who started the sasser worm.

Hope he gets his just desserts!

Why is that, Mac?

AA

Firewall so important
 

Sasser gone. To improve my knowledge of computers has anybody the time to answer the following qustions:-

Why didn't McFee spot I had the Sasser?

Why did Freeserve seem most vulnerable yet one other server, Supanet, seem immune to the Sasser?

When I found a firewall on the disc that came with the Toshiba laptop MSN 'said 'strongly recommend you do not load- it may not be compatible and could cause instability'. However,I already had a unstable laptop which kept closing down so I loaded it anyway. Eventually, I found a MSN website that told me how to go into the 'options' via Internet connections and there was 'enable firewall' button! Anybody like XELIOS firewall or should I dump and use the MSN/XP one?

As part of the debugging I deleted all cookies and found a MSN patch that would download without having to first download an XP update. At one attempt (of many) to download the update the window said it would take 6913 minutes ! - was this the sasser slowing things down or my rotten telephone/server? ( eventually it took only 2hours 30 minutes!)

Good grief, the guy who wrote Sasser and Netsky has been given a job with SecurePoint - producers of anti-virus programs and firewalls.

Crime pays, evidently.

Link to BBC news story

Mind you, he's still awaiting trial, so he might not be around long anough to collect a pension from them.

It's catching on. MyDoom-U and MyDoom-V contain a message saying that "we searching 4 work in AV (anti-virus) industry." :rolleyes:

http://www.sophos.com/images/common/misc/mydoomv.jpg

Charles,

It sounds a lot like negotiating with terrorists. All you do is encourage more to follow.

If they commit a crime like this, they should not be allowed to work in the industry. (Unless self employed that is.)

Take Care,

Richard

Steve Gibson
 

quote:ROFL - Sorry PPRuNe Pop but no one in the real IT community seems to take Steve Gibson very seriously


Why is that, Mac? [says Ausatco]

See http://grcsucks.com/

Spinrite was really a clever concept (and AFAIK the first program that allowed you to adjust interleave nondestructively) - hats off for that.

grc.com offers some useful elementary checks (thanks Steve) but being "Gibson safe" doesn't mean you can't be hacked by someone who really knows what they are up to.

Gibson isn't really a security pro.

See http://www.jluster.org/log/d/textual...ldsup_analyzed for an analysis of Shields UP! by someone who knows what they are talking about.

Thanks for the links, Mac.

I had a look at both. I thought the first was hoist on its own petard. It accuses Gibson of, among other things, promoting personal views as fact and making unsubstantiated claims and statements. Yet that is just what the site does in reference to Gibson. It attacks the person, not the ideas or claims. I followed quite a few of its plethora of links and found much the same. My impression is that it is pretty much a crusade written by a zealot.

The second link is far more useful and has in fact moderated my enthusiasm for Gibson's writings. Reasonable critiques of claims and statements, backed up with technical explanation. Of course, for those of us who don't know one way or t'other that may not mean much and may be confusing, contradicting things we thought were unarguable fact, but at least it's credible discussion and not just personal vilification.

AA

Ok, so the analysis in the second link is useful to have, and puts the product in perspective. But what we don't get is an alternative product. Anyone got any suggestions?