New Cyber Attacks May Target Your PC

[exfileme]

The new wave of cyber attacks may actually encrypt your data or reformat your hard drive.

New Cyber Attacks May Target Your PC : Read more

 

[rdawise]

Well guess I'm the first to post on this one (unless someone hit's submit before me). Before anyone posts that this is another scare tactic by the US to tighten internet security, please read where it says this came from South Korea. This quote interests me:

Over the course of the week, more details have surfaced on how the three waves of attacks have taken place. The perpetrators used a virus that infected many PCs worldwide, thus creating a nasty botnet. This past weekend, the botnet was activated and began to flood the targeted websites with massive amounts of requests, overloading the servers and knocking many websites offline. Now it's believed that many of those infected PCs will "self-terminate" by wiping out the hard drives sector by sector, or encrypting user data.

Are you referring to Conficker? So that's what it does. I guess if you wake up and your PC's harddrive was wiped, you know they got you. Man, they could at least call the next morning after screwing you like that...

 

[Ramar]

Any reason noone wants to blame the Iranians even though those of us who are internet savvy already know it's them?

Are we still trying to pretend they're our friend?

 

[brendano257]

Some of us have nothing to worry about at all

Running AVG Free, Avast, and Spy bot S&D simultaneously. Have not had a single problem with either performance/annoying bothersome side effects or viruses. No funky hardware wipes either

Unfortunately these sorts of attacks are only dangerous to the unaware...which happens to be the vast majority when it comes to computers.

 

[lifelesspoet]

I'm not a fanboy nor am I advocating a particular system, but I would very much prefer if you didn't use PC as being the same as windows. Mac os X and linux have viruses and security holes as well and they are as well personal computers. With their growing market share it is increasingly common for a none windows pc's to not run windows.
I know what you meant, but would appreciate it very much.

 

[keither5150]

Terminating the infected PC's would destroy their valuable Botnet.
Not a smart move by whoever is controlling them. .

These infected PC's will not self-terminate. They will continue to operate and will most likely be updated to be more destructive. Thinking that they will self-terminate is naive

Hopefully all Government and essential service companies have secure servers. Add on an IT staff that monitors traffic and knows what IDS means.

Of course this all happened without warning..... wait a minute... does anyone remember Mafia boy? A 15 year kid from Canada that shut down Yahoo, Amazon and Dell to name a few. I believe that this was about 9 years ago.

9 years should be enough warning.

DDOS attacks are hard to defend against. Monitoring and advanced firewalls are a good start.

 

[mdillenbeck]

[citation][nom]Ramar[/nom]Any reason noone wants to blame the Iranians even though those of us who are internet savvy already know it's them?Are we still trying to pretend they're our friend?[/citation]

Evidence?

No, I didn't think so. Just that logic fallacy where you say "those who agree with my unsupported argument are smart/skilled, but those who disagree obviously are imbeciles/ignorant."

 

[P_haze420]

I believe it is our own gov doing this cyber attack. Obama hired a cyber-security couple months ago. Gov want to control the internet because it has no censorship and they want keep the "truth" away from people. Internet is our last freedom, I hope that we'll get those motherfuckers and get our right back.

 

[Ramar]

[citation][nom]MDillenbeck[/nom]Evidence?No, I didn't think so. Just that logic fallacy where you say "those who agree with my unsupported argument are smart/skilled, but those who disagree obviously are imbeciles/ignorant."[/citation]
iran.whyweprotest.net

They've already been proven to be attacking Twitter, a legitimate business that I believe we can trust when they say "Yes, Iran is behind it."

There's plenty of logic behind it being Iran, and plenty of IP logs on my server's TOR to prove it. Why don't you help us fight rather than assume that because 4chan has something to do with it, it MUST be a hoax?

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]lifelesspoet[/nom]I'm not a fanboy nor am I advocating a particular system, but I would very much prefer if you didn't use PC as being the same as windows.[/citation]I agree. Most "computer" viruses are "Windows" viruses.[citation]Mac os X and linux have viruses and security holes as well and they are as well personal computers. With their growing market share it is increasingly common for a none windows pc's to not run windows.I know what you meant, but would appreciate it very much.[/citation]Apple's security has been a little sloppy in the past but even adding their viruses with those of Linux are as very small fraction of the total number of viruses in circulation. A large portion of the Internet uses Linux servers including all of Google, every TiVo box, and a ridiculous number of consumer wireless routers, and I've only seen one virus ever on a Linux system several years ago. That was one that affected only phpBB, the Santy worm IIRC. There are a lot of reports about Linux security holes because they are very paranoid about security (although not as much as OpenBSD). They fret over any potential problem, even those which can only be exploited by a local user sitting at the keyboard.

 

[rambo117]

[citation][nom]brendano257[/nom]Unfortunately these sorts of attacks are only dangerous to the unaware...which happens to be the vast majority when it comes to computers.[/citation]
where do i getz meh free pr0nzz?

 

[rdawise]

[citation][nom]p_haze420[/nom]I believe it is our own gov doing this cyber attack. Obama hired a cyber-security couple months ago. Gov want to control the internet because it has no censorship and they want keep the "truth" away from people. Internet is our last freedom, I hope that we'll get those motherfuckers and get our right back.[/citation]

So if your theory was correct, why would Obama target S. Korean PCs? If he wanted to tighten US censorship wouldn't it be more prudent to only affect US computers? Gotta love the Obama fear tactics folks though...

 

[mdillenbeck]

[citation][nom]Ramar[/nom]iran.whyweprotest.netThey've already been proven to be attacking Twitter, a legitimate business that I believe we can trust when they say "Yes, Iran is behind it."

There's plenty of logic behind it being Iran, and plenty of IP logs on my server's TOR to prove it. Why don't you help us fight rather than assume that because 4chan has something to do with it, it MUST be a hoax?[/citation]

I'll agree they would have a reason to attack Twitter. However, lets look at the current targets - US and South Korean governmental (military) systems. By use of Occam's Razor, I find it hard to believe that Iran would choose these types of targets over social networking sites and news/information sites. In fact, if they wanted to cut the flow of information, I would think they would look for ways to slow/stop internet and sms traffic from their country to the outside world (or from outside world to their country).

Note that this does not mean I do not believe that Iran did or would use DoS attacks to mete out its own end - however, do not enter another fallacy where I am given a false dichotomy to choose from (either I agree with you or I do not believe Iran has/will use DoS attacks against informational sites).

 

[mdillenbeck]

[citation][nom]rdawise[/nom]So if your theory was correct, why would Obama target S. Korean PCs? If he wanted to tighten US censorship wouldn't it be more prudent to only affect US computers? Gotta love the Obama fear tactics folks though...[/citation]

Actually, there quite a lot of believers in False Flag operations. Thin 9/11 and the London bombings. (Note: I am not saying I agree with these hypotheses, only that there are many who do.)

So why target a larger spectrum? The False Flag believers would say to lend credence to the argument and to make this an international issue - so that all nations of the world would embrace tighter restrictions on internet use. (Again, I am not saying I believe this scenario is what is happening...)

Honestly, the only reason the original poster mentioned Obama is because he hired some "tech savvy" people into the government - and they probably believe that most government operatives are not there to help the security of the USA while preserving the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. In other words, they can't waste such talent shoring up security - they must be working to use exploits to conduct a complex hoax.

 

[ravenware]

[citation][nom]rdawise[/nom]So if your theory was correct, why would Obama target S. Korean PCs? If he wanted to tighten US censorship wouldn't it be more prudent to only affect US computers? Gotta love the Obama fear tactics folks though...[/citation]
Right, and what makes more since is to raise critical alarm through the media about attacks that have most likely been going on for decades. It makes even more sense to publicly broadcast to the world that your infrastructure is under attack and is vulnerable; essentially ringing a dinner bell or putting a drop of blood into shark infested waters.

 

[Guest]

If these companies who are under attack would either hire proper security specialists -- people who can prevent this from happening -- or pay the ones they have an appropriate wage, I am pretty sure this would be prevented no matter who is doing the attacking.

 

[acecombat]

[citation][nom]keither5150[/nom]DDOS attacks are hard to defend against. Monitoring and advanced firewalls are a good start.[/citation]
Too bad a firewall is useless to defend against DDOS attacks on an site that serves internet content as the firewall can block the connection to the server, but the connection up to the firewall is still flooded and causes downtime regardless.

 

[rdawise]

[citation][nom]MDillenbeck[/nom]Honestly, the only reason the original poster mentioned Obama is because he hired some "tech savvy" people into the government - and they probably believe that most government operatives are not there to help the security of the USA while preserving the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. In other words, they can't waste such talent shoring up security - they must be working to use exploits to conduct a complex hoax.[/citation]

I completely agree.

[citation][nom]ravenware[/nom]Right, and what makes more since is to raise critical alarm through the media about attacks that have most likely been going on for decades. It makes even more sense to publicly broadcast to the world that your infrastructure is under attack and is vulnerable; essentially ringing a dinner bell or putting a drop of blood into shark infested waters.[/citation]

Didn't this article come from South Korea? So wouldn't they be the ones raising the "critical alarm"?

 

[ravenware]

[citation][nom]rdawise[/nom]I completely agree.Didn't this article come from South Korea? So wouldn't they be the ones raising the "critical alarm"?[/citation]
"The attacks, originally kicking off on July 4th and using the "distributed denial of service" approach, have targeted South Korean and --> U.S. government

 

[xrodney]

[citation][nom]acecombat[/nom]Too bad a firewall is useless to defend against DDOS attacks on an site that serves internet content as the firewall can block the connection to the server, but the connection up to the firewall is still flooded and causes downtime regardless.[/citation]
Well good network components and firewall can help reduce efect of DDOS to some extent. It could block DDOS from comming inside of your network, allowing to you working localy at least or it could reduce load on your network as with discarding DDOS packets instead of processing them could reduce load on your network hardware/software allowing some normal packets to pass thru.
Its allways matter of two things, how much bandwith your network have and how many packets it can process. If either of those is on their limits, your network will be afected.