[RESOLVED] Funlove, threat or menace?

[captpackrat]

Just how serious is the Funlove virus? From what I've read, it has no payload, so it's relatively harmless, but we have a BIG network here (At least 250 systems on just this LAN, and easily thousands across the entire corporate WAN). Anti-virus protection is rather spotty, with quite a few machines having outdated versions or no A/V at all. Many people have open file shares, and often entire drives shared, with no passwords.

I've got a single open file share, and Norton Anti-Virus started grabbing and cleaning the virus as it was attempting to infect my system. I did a quick 'netstat', and found it was coming from three different file servers in two offices.

I talked to our local IS network guy, and he's all calm and everything about it, no big deal, it'll clear up on its own. I, on the otherhand, think it could become a big deal, because of the spotty A/V coverage, and the fact that other LAN's connected to the WAN are becoming infected. I think that more drastic action should be taken.

What do y'all think?

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Captain Troy D. Pack Rat
`akbar Press

If you're furry and you know it, hug the mouse!

[Sowulo]

For all the hours I have to spend cleaning up after viruses, I'd say anyone who doesn't take them seriously should be fired if their business loses even one file to virus damage. To not take basic reasonable steps to protect one's business is just stupidity and negligence....

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Ya never know, ya know?

[QSECOFR]

I'll have to agree. I take every virus seriously. Viruses have the potential to make you network vunerable to hackers, steal company secrets, and more. That is poor business to let your system be crawling with viruses. It could make your data incorrect, and people will never trust the data again. Leaving viruses on your system jeporadizes the integrity of the data on the system.

I'll get off of my soapbox now.

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OS/400...At least it's not Microsoft.

[MacGyver]

The viruses with no apparent payload, such as damage to system files, formatting of HD, etc, are sometimes underestimated. The VBS viruses and other trojans which propogate themselves thru email can quickly overwhelm email servers.

I know with Novell, if our email database grows too large, it will fill the HD and the whole server will crash! Then the only way to clean it up is from the text-based console (yuck!)

With the tools available, there is no excuse for virus infection, and certainly no excuse for data loss. TAPE BACKUP NIGHTLY! No excuses! If you can't backup your entire server during the night, then get more tape backup drives until you do! Tape drives are dirt cheap compared to the cost of starting over from scratch!

You need both Antivirus protection and nightly backups or you're toast!

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Tech: "You need to pack up your entire computer and bring it back in to us."
Customer: "Why?"
Tech: "BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO STUPID TO OWN A COMPUTER!"

[This message has been edited by MacGyver (edited March 15, 2001).]

[GirlGeek]

I agree with everyone, regardless of the virus I remove it. I had one that removed the cd drivers, big deal, right? The shop that handled it just reloaded the drivers and let the virus sit. One year later it occured again and I'm the one that got the panicked customer on the phone and the client was faced with yet another bill. Even in the best case scenario they're a hassle and I don't know about anyone else but I have better things to do than repeat myself constantly.
Though...according to my kids I do that a lot.

[Froghead]

Funlove or whatever should all be killed ASAP!

Since the Matrix virus hit last fall the new policy in my store is every machine that comes in the door gets a full virus scan. We either update the customers existing or install NAV2001. Detection rate now is down to about 20% but it was over 50% when the Matrix first struck. Fun topic would be how many viruses (virii?) have you found on a computer that was still working and what are the greatest number of infected files? For me it's been 4 different viruses on one machine and 1042 infected files on another (Matrix)

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What I know about computers would fill volumes - what I don't know would fill a wharehouse.

[SNAFU]

At work we didn't have any A/V (though i stressed it about everyday) AND someone on the net ALWAYS got a virus about every week. It wasn't till we had the bymer and another backdoor on the system (just about every computer but mine and another IT's) and it took a good freakin' 3 days working till 2am to get the nasties outta all the comps, did the big peanuts decide to get some protection.(dang...using the word "protection" makes me sound like I'm giving a Sex Ed. lecture to exec's) This company really makes me sick sometimes.

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Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for!!