Favorite Items From comp.risks

Index

404 - Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

Unknown source

Insurer considers Microsoft NT high-risk

Risks 21.44, May 29, 2001

Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

Risks 20.29, April 2, 1999

IBM & The Telecommunications Revolution

Unknown source

Y2K Memo

Risks 20.21, February 12, 1999

"*sex" County sites blocked

Risks 19.25, July 18, 1997

God & The History Of The Net

alt.2600.moderated, November 11, 1996

Mobile Phone Mayhem!

Risks 18.60, November 8, 1996

Four Face Charges In IBM Computer Theft

Raleigh News and Observer: Sept. 17, p. 5B

IBM And U.N. Promote Data-Protection Steps

White Plains Reporter Dispatch: Sept. 17, p. 5B

The risks of apathy in telephone callers

Risks 18.32, August 13, 1996

Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 12:20:53 +0400 (MSD)
From: Oleg Broytmann <phd@phd.fep.ru>
Subject: Insurer considers Microsoft NT high-risk

[...] An insurance company has started to charge 5-15% more if you use
Windows NT as a base for Internet services:

  "We saw that our NT-based clients were having more downtime" due to
  hacking, says John Wurzler, founder and CEO of the Michigan company, which
  has been selling hacker insurance since 1998.  Wurzler said the decision
  to charge higher premiums was not mandated by the syndicates affiliated
  with Lloyd's of London that underwrite the insurance he sells.  Instead,
  the move was based on findings from 400 security assessments that his firm
  has done on small and midsize businesses over the past three years.
  Wurzler found that system administrators working on open-source systems
  tend to be better trained and stay with their employers longer than those
  at firms using Windows software, where turnover can exceed 33 percent per
  year.  http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2766045,00.html

Oleg Broytmann  http://phd.pp.ru/  phd@phd.pp.ru

Back up to the Index

Date: 	Tue, 30 Mar 1999 05:31:34 +0200
From: Anonymous <nobody@REPLAY.COM>
Subject: Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

  [Contributed belatedly by several RISKS readers.  TNX.  Sorry we could
  not have included it in one of YESTERDAY'S three issues.  PGN]

LART* Advisory LA-99.01.Tuxissa
Original issue date: Apr. 0a, 1999
Last revised: --

Topic: Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

This advisory is intended primarily for network administrators responsible
for user configuration and maintenance.

Attack of the Tuxissa Virus, March 29, 1999

What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has
turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history.  The
creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair", modified
the well-known Melissa [1] virus to download and install Linux on infected
machines.

"It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked
through the Tuxissa virus source code.  "This virus goes well beyond the
feeble troublemaking of Melissa."  The advocate enumerated some of the tasks
the virus performs in the background while the user is blissfully playing
Solitaire.

Once the virus is activated, it first works on propagating itself. It has a
built-in e-mail harvesting module that downloads all the pages referenced in
the user's Internet Explorer bookmarks and scans them for e-mail addresses.
Using Outlook, the virus sends a copy of itself to every e-mail address it
comes across.

After it has successfully reproduced, the virus begins the tricky process of
upgrading the system to Linux.  First, the virus modifies AUTOEXEC.BAT so
that the virus will be re-activated if the system crashes or is shut down
while the upgrade is in process. Second, the virus downloads a stripped-down
Slackware distribution, using a lengthy list of mirror sites to prevent the
virus from overloading any one server.

Then the virus configures a UMSDOS filesystem to install Linux on.  Since
this filesystem resides on a FAT partition, there is no need to re-partition
the hard drive, one of the few actions that the Word macro language doesn't
allow.

Next, the virus uncompresses the downloaded files into the new Linux
filesystem.  The virus then permanently deletes all copies of the Windows
Registry, virtually preventing the user from booting into Windows without a
re-install.  After modifying the boot sector, the virus terminates its own
life by rebooting the system. The computer boots into the Slackware setup
program, which automatically finishes the installation of Linux.  Finally,
the dazed user is presented with the Linux login prompt and the text,
"Welcome to Linux.  You'll never want to use Windows again.  Type 'root' to
begin..."

The whole process take about two hours, assuming the user has a decent
Internet connection.  Since the virus runs invisibly in the background, the
user has no chance to stop it until it's too late.

The e-mail message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important
Message About Windows Security".  The text of the body says, "I want to let
you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT,
Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your
system against these attacks.  Visit these sites for more information..."
The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free
software.

Slashdot is one of those links.  "That could spell trouble," one Slashdot
expert told Humorix.  "Slashdot could fall victim to the new 'Macro Virus
Effect' if this virus continues to propagate at its present exponential
growth rate.  Red Hat's portal site, another site present on the virus'
links list, seems to be quite sluggish right now..."

Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy.  The "Anonymous
Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's
gag, a demonstration of how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution".
Some other Usenet reader is responsible for actually spreading the virus
into the wild.  One observer speculated, "I imagine the virus was first sent
to the addresses of several well-known spammers.  The virus probably latched
on to the spammer's e-mail lists and began propagating at a fantastic rate.
With no boundary to its growth, this thing could wind up infecting every
single Net-connected Wintel box in the world.  Wouldn't that be a shame!"

Linus Torvalds, who just left for a two week vacation, was unavailable for
comment at press time.  We have a strong feeling that his vacation will be
cut short very soon...

[1] http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4463.html

James S. Baughn  http://i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/

  [For those of you not familiar with the imagery, think about what erect
  short-legged flightless aquatic-bird operating-system symbol seems to be
  wearing a tux.  But then don't ask about who the Mel in Melissa is.  PGN]

Back up to the Index

KABINDA, ZAIRE--In a move IBM officials are hailing as a major step in the
company's ongoing worldwide telecommunications revolution, M'wana Ndeti, a
member of Zaire's Bantu tribe, used an IBM global uplink network modem
yesterday to crush a nut.

Ndeti, who spent 20 minutes trying to open the nut by hand, easily cracked
it open by smashing it repeatedly with the powerful modem.

"I could not crush the nut by myself," said the 47-year-old Ndeti, who
added the savory nut to a thick, peanut based soup minutes later.  "With
IBM's help, I was able to break it."  Ndeti discovered the nut-breaking,
28.8 V.34 modem yesterday, when IBM was shooting a commercial in his
southwestern Zaire village.  During a break in shooting with Japanese
schoolchildren, Ndeti snuck onto the set and took the modem, which he
believed would serve well as a "smashing" utensil.

IBM officials were not surprised the longtime computer giant was able to
provide Ndeti with practical solutions to his everyday problems.  "Our
telecommunications systems offer people all over the world global
networking solutions that fit their specific needs," said Herbert Ross,
IBM's director of marketing.  "Whether you're a nun cloistered in an
Italian abbey or an Aborigine in Australia's Great Sandy Desert, IBM has
the ideas to get you where you want to go today."

According to Ndeti, of the modem's many powerful features, most impressive
was its hard plastic casing, which easily sustained several minutes of
vigorous pounding against a large stone.  "I put the nut on a rock, and I
hit it with the modem," Ndeti said.  "The modem did not break.  It is a
good modem."

Ndeti was so impressed with the modem that he purchased a new,
state-of-the-art IBM workstation, complete with a PowerPC 601
microprocessor, a quad-speed internal CD-ROM drive and three 16-bit
ethernet networking connectors.  The tribesman has already made good use of
the computer system, fashioning a gazelle trap out of its wires, a boat
anchor out of the monitor and a crude but effective weapon from its mouse.

"This is a good computer," said Ndeti, carving up a just-captured gazelle
with the computer's flat, sharp internal processing device.  "I am using
every part of it.  I will cook this gazelle on the keyboard."  Hours later,
Ndeti capped off his delicious gazelle dinner by smoking the computer's
200-page owner's manual.

IBM spokespeople praise Ndeti's choice of computers.  "We are pleased that
the Bantu people are turning to IBM for their business needs," said company
CEO William Allaire.  "From Kansas City to Kinshasa, IBM is bringing the
world closer together.  Our cutting-edge technology is truly creating a
global village."

Back up to the Index

Dear Boss:

I hope that I haven't misunderstood your instructions.  Because to be
honest, none of this Y to K problem makes any sense to me.  At any rate I
have finished the conversion of all of the months on all the company
calendars for next year (year 2000).  The calendars have returned from the
printer and are ready to be distributed with the following new months:

    Januark
    Februark
    Mak
    Julk
    
I've also changed the following days:

    Mondak
    Tuesdak
    Wednesdak
    Thursdak
    Fridak
    Saturdak
    Sundak
    
In general, all references to "Day" were changed to "Dak"
(e.g. "President's Dak"). And all references to "Birthday" were changed to
"Birthdak" (e.g. "Washington's Birthdak").

I had a hard time deciding about "New Year's Day", "Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day", "Yom Kippur", and "Hanukkah", but I finally changed them to "New
Kear's Dak", "Martin Luther Ying, Jr. Dak", "Kom Yippur", and "Hanuyyah".

Back up to the Index

Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 10:17:35 -0400
From: "Carey, F E (Frank), NCSIO" <fcarey@att.com>
Subject: "*sex" County sites blocked

Three New Jersey counties have found that information they put up on
the Internet is being blocked.  The Newark (NJ) Star Ledger reports that
screening tools (they specifically mention the AOL tool) block access to
the Sussex County Fair, Middlesex County College, Essex County College,
and the Essex County Clerk's office.  It should be obvious what's going
on. The string "sex" triggers blocking of these sites.  A spokesman for
Net Nanny reportedly said that most problems occur when parents rely on the
broadest keywords possible, adding that "...some people don't read the
manuals."

Frank Carey  f.e.carey@att.com

Back up to the Index

Newsgroups: alt.2600.moderated
From: ab756@torfree.net (Graham Bullers)
Subject: GOD
Message-ID: <E0qD9w.5oy.0.bloor@torfree.net>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 23:58:43 GMT


       History Of The Net
       ==================

First there was God. He was quite lonely so he created Dennis.

Dennis was unimpressed with God.

So,... God created Brian.

But, Brian got bored with God.

So Brian and Dennis started playing, and they created C. God saw C, and
saw that it was good.  So he decided to let Brian and Dennis play some
more.

Then Brian and Dennis created Unix.  God saw Unix, and he was jealous.
So he created Bill to torment Brian and Dennis and obscure their creation
(for God could not destroy Unix, for he secretly admired its perfection).

So Bill created Microsoft.  And Microsoft created Windows.  And God saw
that it was bad, but it had market share, so he was happy.  Then Bill got
cocky, and his ego got bigger than God's.  So to knock Bill down a couple
of pegs, God put into effect, a wondrous plan.

First God created Tim.  And Tim created the World Wide Web (using Unix,
of course).  This was good, but not THAT good.  So God created Marc.
Marc created Mosaic (using Unix, of course).  Mosaic created a huge
feeding frenzy that has got a lot of people who are reading this their
jobs.

But that's a different story.  Mosaic was good, and God saw it was good,
so he allowed Marc to start Netscape.  Back to this later.

But all this time Brian and Dennis started to make something better than
Unix called Plan 9 (because God was successful in foiling Brian and
Dennis' previous seven plans [there was no Plan 8 because Brian and
Dennis pulled the wool over God's eyes and just jumped to Plan 9, which
was too bright a move for even God to figure out.] )

Eventually, God figured out how to create Larry.

No one knows how or why he created Larry, except perhaps to reduce
productivity at the Jet Propulsion Labs at NASA.  [Rumors are that God
created Larry because he secretly liked what Dennis and Brian had done
with C, but didn't think C and Unix was enough -- this probably isn't
true because God believed he had destroyed Brian and Dennis' plans by
destroying Plans 1-7, and by creating Microsoft to slay their beloved
Unix.

Anyhow, Larry created Perl (using Unix and C, of course), and God saw it
was good, so he made Randal.  Larry and Randal wrote books about Perl.
And everyone saw that this was good, except snobs who were too much into
C, Windows, and Intel.  (It so happens that Randal was so cool he figured
out a way to break into Unix at Intel, and Intel sued him for it but
that's another story also -- chances are Randal would not have been able
to break into *Plan 9* at Intel, but Intel isn't cool enough to be
running Plan 9)

Anyhow, back to Randal.  So Randal and Larry wrote books, but they had to
be nice because of the people they worked for.  So then came Tom.  But
back to Tom later.

Anyhow, God saw Netscape (made using Unix and C, of course), and he saw
it was good, and that annoyed Bill quite a bit.  And that made Him very
happy, and made Marc very rich.  But Bill was very very rich.  But that's
a *completely* different story.

But as good as Larry's creation, Perl, was, it couldn't do everything, so
God created Scott.  Scott announced Java, and this was big news.  Now
Java really pissed Bill off, because Bill also created Blackbird, and
Java killed Blackbird.  This was bad because killing Blackbird also meant
killing the Microsoft Network.  And many rejoiced over that, but that,
too is another story.

Now Java, obviously had done much to annoy Bill.  For Java was so good
that Bill had to license Java.  All this time, Scott poked lots of fun at
Bill because Sun, which was where Scott worked, made a better OS, derived
-- of course -- from Unix, which was better than Bill's and Microsoft's
Windows.

Anyhow, even God's creations Steve and Steve who created Apple couldn't
make Bill license the much superior MacOS.  But finally, Bill had to
license Java.  So justice was served, and Bill's ego was served him on a
platter for him to eat his words.  Or something.  That part is unclear.

So by this time Windows and Microsoft and Bill in general really sucked.
Especially considering the advantages that Brian and Dennis' C and Unix,
running Marc's Netscape and Mosaic over Tim's World Wide Web, doing cool
CGI stuff with Larry's Perl, which you learned from Randal and Tom, and
got to program with Scott's Java.

And God realized he had put Bill down too far.  So then God made it so
that Marc's Netscape and Mosaic could run on Windows.  We already know
that Bill had to license Java from Scott.  We know that Bill missed the
boat for not beating Tim to the punch on the World Wide Web.  The last
straw was for God to make it possible for Larry's Perl to run on Bill's
Windows.

So back to Tom.  Tom was a Perl God.  And God didn't like this, but Tom's
a God so there isn't much God could do, so He couldn't stop Tom from
saying things like "install an operating system on your poor lonely
computer the way God and Dennis intended", and "Espousing the eponymous
/cgi-bin/perl.exe?FMH.pl execution model is like reading a suicide note
-- three days too late."

The moral to the story?  God is fickle.  That's why Microsoft and Bill
and Windows exists.  Do what God intended, install C, Unix,
Mosaic/Netscape, Java, and Perl on your system, and make Brian, Dennis,
Larry, Tim, Tom, Randal, Scott, and even Steve and Steve, I'm sure, happy
by doing so.

Oh yeah, Linus was cool too.  He's the guy you thank for being able to
run all the cool stuff on your crappy little Pee Cee.  (anything with >
x86 on it, by default, is crappy, no PERSONAL flames intended

--
=-=-Graham-John Bullers-=-=-www.Freenet.Edmonton.ab.ca/~real/index.html-=-=
Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.The courage
to change the things I can.And the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people
-=-=-I had to kill because they pissed me off.-=-=-alt.2600.moderated-=-=-

Back up to the Index

Date: Thu, 7 Nov 96 17:18:26 -0000
From: "Trevor Warwick INF-SP" <twarwick@madge.com>
Subject: Mobile Phone Mayhem!

Another twist on the well known "Cleaner buffs computer room floor and
takes down entire site" stories:

We recently had some engineers from AT&T in our computer room for three
days, working on a PABX which also lives in there.  During this period,
two of our main Netware servers have been extremely unreliable, crashing
several times a day.  The AT&T engineers were working near these servers,
and we initially thought that they might have been causing the crashes by
disturbing some cables.

After a few of these unexplained crashes, one of our MIS group noticed
that every time he went in to the server room to reboot the dead servers,
one of the AT&T engineers was using his mobile phone.  So, they were
asked to turn their phones off while working in the server room, and the
problem has not reoccurred.

To test the theory a bit further, the MIS group then took an otherwise
unused server, and experimented with using a mobile phone near it.  With
the working phone being used less than a foot away from the machine, they
provoked a crash which corrupted the system disk (and its mirror volume)
beyond repair.

Trevor Warwick, Madge Networks, Sefton Park, Bells Hill, Slough, England
+44 (0)1753 661401  twarwick@madge.com  fax: +44 (0)1753 661011

Back up to the Index

(Raleigh News and Observer:  Sept.  17, p. 5B)

Four New York men have been charged with kidnapping and armed robbery in
the Sept. 4 theft of 28 laptop computers from IBM in Research Triangle
Park.  Three of the men are being held in the Durham County Jail -- a
fourth man remains at large.  The four burst into the IBM warehouse on
Sept. 4, tied up five employees and made off in a rental truck with
computers valued at more than $78,000.

Back up to the Index

(White Plains Reporter Dispatch:  Sept. 17, p. 5B)

IBM and the U.N. have joined together to urge businesses to protect
themselves against natural and man-made disasters that could disable
their business operations.  The Coalition for Global Business Protection
will focus on spreading the message that, according to analysts, 60% of
companies struck by major disasters go out of business within two years
because they did not have adequate off-site back-up for computer data
and other operations.

Back up to the Index

Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 13:35:57 -0400
From: Christopher Kline <ckline@tc.cornell.edu>
Subject: The risks of apathy in telephone callers

*Information Week* (22 Jul 1996, page 12) reports that K&T Communications of
Fort Worth, Texas has registered the phrases "I don't know", "I don't care",
"Whoever", and "It doesn't matter" as names of long-distance carriers in
Texas.

The risk? When you make an operator-assisted long-distance call from Texas
and the operator asks which long distance carrier you would like to use, it
is in your best interest to have a preference. K&T charges "approximately
twice" that of the largest carriers.

Opening up the long-distance markets may help spur the growth of an
information infrastructure, but whether or not it helps lower prices for
consumers is an open question.

Christopher Kline Cornell University ckline@acm.org

  [For folks who still have rotary dials, you may find an automated
  voice interface that lets you utter those phrases as well!  PGN]

Back up to the Index