Yet another Windows weakness exploited

[Stoga]

Apparently some "geniuses" are locking up computers then attempting to ransom the contents.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/interne....ap/index.html
It's things like this that I consider my computer as unsecure and I keep my important info on paper in a file cabinet.
They can't hack what isnt in there!
I'm not usually one for government intervention, but like someone busting glass on the highway or putting cherry bombs in mail boxes, it's time for higher penalties for cyber vandalism.

[DanL]

Originally Posted by Stoga

I'm not usually one for government intervention, but like someone busting glass on the highway or putting cherry bombs in mail boxes, it's time for higher penalties for cyber vandalism.

Yep. Hang 'em high! 'Course, you gotta catch 'em first. Seems like they could track the ransome to the e-mail address, sort of like staking out the drop point.

We had an employee who set up one of those free hotmail addresses, then thought he could send anonymous e-mails to the CEO. Seems they were taken as a threat because of some words used. Airlines don't take too well to those things these days. Anyhow, the feds got involved, got his data from MSN and went to visit him at his home. He was offered a chance to seek other employment.

So, they can track these things if they want.

[Stoga]

Yeah, these guys are definetly not too swift. My worry has been more along the line of when the "hacker kiddies" decide to do this for fun, just cause they can.

[ehostler]

If the ransom is directed as an EFT to a Swiss account, the feds can't track that. For email, hackers can use anonymous remailers. They do not track where the email originated from. SPAMMERS use anonymouse remailers all of the time. That's why they are so hard to stop.

So, if you can't track the bank account or the email then you have nothing to go on. Even when the hacker gets into your system, odds are they spoofed their IP address. Odds are, they will send a corrective program via an annonymouse remailer.

Hackers get caught by bragging about what they have done or by using their hacker names in the transfers and programs. The governement can begin to compile a lot of data and sniff around for that name.

[dust]

Anonymous remailers - isn't there a required sender IP address for every email? Doesn’t the email acct supplier (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc) have a record of this return IP address? Or are you saying that the IP is spoofed using a proxy server or such?

I know it is easy to spoof a return email address but I thought that every email must have an IP address attached to i

[ehostler]

Yahoo, hotmail, etc are NOT anonymous remailers. An anonymous remailer is normally POP3 and setup by a group of spammers or hackers. The remailer does not track the ip address of the email traffic. The anonymous remailer also spoofs it IP address, so that it is very hard to find it and shut it down.

[Walkercolt]

If we held Bill Gates for ransom and threatened to cut-off his balls, alot of this old DOS3 crap would get fixed, which is the real problem. If you hack in DOS 3 code, you can do almost anything to a Windows operating system, if you're smart and paticent enough. I wish I was "techie" enough to run Linex or Lindows. I've got 21 meg of patches on my Windrows XP Pro system and counting.

[Groundpounder18]

Originally Posted by RP Racing-#940

Linux isnt that hard once you get it going.

No, it isn't at all. I've been using Linux since '01, and I'll never go back. I hate it when I have to use windoze (like today at the library). It's nice to be able to spend time enjoying or using the computer productively vs. spending hours each week maintaining it (daily anti-virus & spyware scans, etc.). The only reason to stay with windoze is if you are heavily into gaming. But then, you can set up a dual boot system with windoze & Linux and only boot into windoze when you play. And actually, there are options for running most windoze games in Linux. That's the great thing about Linux, you have choices - like Burger King, you can have it your way. Of course, if you're more comfortable being "sheeple" and paying Bill Gates to make most of your computing choices for you, by all means stick with windoze.

Some useful links for exploring Linux:

http://www.linux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/
http://www.ubuntu.com/ (this is the distribution I use, very user-friendly)
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/ (free online help forum for the Ubuntu distribution. Most other popular distributions have something similar)

Windows is a 32-bit extension to a 16-bit shell for an 8-bit OS written for a 4-bit processor by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1-bit of competition.