Manufacturing Viruses

Interesting read

http://www.manufacturing.net/News-Chinese-Factories-Causing-Technology-Viruses.aspx?menuid=36

grrr...how annoying. more things to kill my pc...hic hic hic....

Somehow none of this surprises me. Like Scotty said in one of the Star Trek movies, the more complicated things get, the easier it is to gum up the works.

In some ways this is things coming back full circle. Before the internet was common at home, the big risk was in floppies passing around infections. This was largely replaced by malware coming through the network. As you harden the networked channels into the PC, it makes sense that those meaning to spread garbage revisit the proliferation of moveable media as vectors in.

I recall lots of odd stuff that you hear about and then seems to vanish. There were motherboard bioses that phoned home or something strange. There's all kinds of weird stuff built into recent microprocessors and probably newer chipsets too. Then there's potential virtualization issues with undetectable hidden programs. Various router companies are supposedly building in homeland security features. Just about everything these days has a virus, "homeland security", or some digital rights traffic cop built in. Let's not even start in on Windows registration schemes

Assuming it's not all just urban legends, it's hard to say where it's all going.

i have a virus for a chinese MP3 player right here on the CD they provided, obviously it was some foo, burning the CD. from what i have seen from others, that same Mass produced glass mastered CD is in many products. it was a fairly benign but very contageous worm type of virus.

it could be one reason WHY the item was dumped for so cheaply (having a "defective cd") and why its perfect to unload it on some sap 4500miles away, across an ocean

A person should also remember that plug and play devices with Writeable memory, may have already BEEN in , someone elses computer, picking up whatever they have . Stuff is returned, to the store, discounted, re-packaged, or returned tested then repackaged and sent back to the shelf.
i doubt there is much effort at clearing it. and a Testor of the item, plugs in everyones viruses into the computer, to spread it to all the other items tested

and yet how many computer users to this day, allow "hidden files" to be invisable as MS designed the system? with these files unseen, a person doesnt even know what is ON the flash memory they sneakernet from computer to computer, merily spreading something they cant see, assuming the magic anti-virus software even knows it exists.

bfg9000 said:

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bahahahahah:twothumbs

scaredofthedark said:

bahahahahah:twothumbs

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Remember the episode where Data phoned home ? That was so cool when he decided to leave the ship. Not much they could do to stop him.

that sounds hilarious. but alas i wasn't old enough to be watching it back then....the only series i watched was voyager

scaredofthedark said:

that sounds hilarious. but alas i wasn't old enough to be watching it back then....the only series i watched was voyager

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I'm desperately hoping you're a percocious 6 year old. Otherwise, my back hurts and I can't find my walker.

ahahah nope add about 17years to that. and i didn't start watching voyager till like senior year in HS when my friend told me about it

On a practical note, it's easy to mitigate the threat from infected devices and media on a Windows PC. Disable AutoPlay. Anyone interested in security ought to become acquainted with non-Admin user accounts as well... if I had to pick between antivirus protection or a non-Admin user account, I'd take the non-Admin user account, hands-down (although naturally you can use both at once).

Another technique available on some versions of Windows (XP Pro, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, Server 2003/2008): use Software Restriction Policy. I love SRP It arbitrarily stops lots of bad stuff, not just AutoPlay attacks.

scaredofthedark said:

ahahah nope add about 17years to that. and i didn't start watching voyager till like senior year in HS when my friend told me about it

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LOL, I bet the reason your friend recommended Voyager was because of that Borg girl with the spectacular figure. Wasn't her name 4sevens? Or Size15... no, maybe not. Ahem.

I think it's Norton & McAfee etc who make all these viruses, so people will then have to pay them to come along and eradicate them. It's a sort of modern-day protection racket, if you think about it.

hahaah nah he's just a big sci-fi guy.
her name is seven of nine
although i'll admit that's the reason why i watched it lol

which is the reason why you should use a free AV,

scaredofthedark said:

her name is seven of nine

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I just recall she kept saying: "Resistance is futile".

scaredofthedark said:

her name is seven of nine

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2 of 40 would have been more accurate.