Will The Internet Come To A Standstill Today?

[Ross]

http://home.businesswire.com/portal...newsLang=en&beanID=202776713&viewID=news_view

That will be 3:00 P.M. EST for me. Less then 3 hours from now.

 

[Phil]

i'm not going to wait to find out, going to the Calif State Fair today and going to have fun!!!

 

[Rain]

CA State fair....

CA State fair....

Hey Phil,

If you see a gorgeous 22 year old kid with a beautiful blonde..... that?s my son!! They?re at the CA state fair today too.

 

[Creed3]

I had just signed up with adelphia broadband a few days ago. All day today, I haven't been able to gain access to my adelphia emails. Maybe this is what is going on with them. When I call tech support, they just have a recording on saying that everyone is having the same problem. Luckily, I still have my earthlink email set up. This whole thing is just a big pain in the you know what! I thought maybe adelphia broadband was just the wrong service to choose. I was thinking about changing to aol broadband. I guess I'll just wait and see what happens.

Take Care Everyone!
Gail

 

[John S]

It will certainly slow down...

It will certainly slow down...

Ross,

I know I've been deleting 100 of those "Re: Your Details", etc emails every day from my Eudora account, and over 250 a day from our office email address. It's all very annoying--I hope it stops soon.

Thanks for the news link.

 

[Ross]

It irritates me to no end because everytime, these things could have been avoided if people would have just applied the patch to start with. Microsoft warned everyone as far back as July 6th and no one listened.

The only ones that have any excuse whatsoever are the computer newbies, not the sysadmins, ISP's, etc. When we they ever learn?

 

[Ross]

Here is an interesting article from one of my favorite newsletters that I thought would be appropriate to share with all of you:

Batten the Hatches

The spate of recent worms makes it clear that way too many people aren't
keeping their PCs secure.

For example, the "Blaster" worm (the first of the recent bunch) spread
itself by email or by direct infection via unguarded network ports. But
any good AV tool, and some high-quality desktop firewalls like
ZoneAlarm, defang hostile inbound mail attachments: This would have
closed off email as an infection vector for this kind of worm attack.

Any decent firewall--- even the simplest--- can block the port probes
that worms like this use to seek new local victims, totally closing off
that infection vector. And the better desktop firewalls also alert you
to suspicious *outbound* activity from your PC, so even if your PC were
somehow infected, you could still see what was going on, and prevent
your machine from infecting others.

And here's the part that makes me just scratch my head in wonder. The
worm was designed to take advantage of a Windows security hole for which
a patch had been released (via a "Critical Update") a month *before* the
worm surfaced! This is a worm that should have gone nowhere.
But clearly, huge numbers of systems were running unpatched,
unprotected, and wide open; millions of PCs were thus needlessly
compromised. Of course, the usual "it's Microsoft's fault!" cry went up.
And while some problems *are* Microsoft's fault, I don't see how we can
pin this one on them. People whose PCs were infected in this outbreak
had ignored a "Critical Update" AND/OR were running unprotected by
desktop firewalls AND/OR were running without up-to-date antivirus
tools. Those are voluntary choices, and (as many found out) ones with
bad consequences.

Many readers of this newsletter are running very well-protected, so I
don't want to bore you by "preaching to the choir." But if you have
coworkers or friends who are leaving themselves open (especially if they
were among the millions and millions who got bit by one or more of the
worms)--- or if you're not well protected yourself--- this may help:

First, stay patched. I know some users worry about applying Critical
Updates, because they sometimes do cause new problems. Up to a point,
that kind of caution is a good thing.

Assuming you have a good antivirus tool and a good desktop firewall
running to protect you from the most-frequent infection vectors, then it
can make sense to wait a few days after a Critical Update appears to see
if others have trouble with it. But it rarely makes sense to wait weeks
or months before applying a Critical Update, and I can think of no
reason just to ignore them: They're called "critical" for a reason.

And please note that you can apply the Critical Updates as soon as they
appear, if you have a good backup process. Then, if something doesn't
work out, it's no big deal because you can undo the change in a matter
of minutes.

For that matter, you usually can apply Critical Update right away
anyway: Although some Critical Updates have caused trouble, most of them
work exactly as they should.

These links may further help:

How to easily set up a multilayered defense for your PC using free or
low-cost software: http://www.informationweek.com/840/langa.htm

Safe ways to test your PC's defenses to make sure they're up to snuff:
http://www.informationweek.com/841/langa.htm

How to weigh the risks and benefits of applying security patches to your PC:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=9901256

 

[nadi]

Thanks

Thanks

Ross,

Thanks for the newletter! I agree 101%. On both of our computers we have auto update turned on for the anti virus.
Also make sure the updates are done asap.

 

[Jean]

The thing that is driving my poor paranoid soul crazy though is that I've been trying to get McAfee installed. I was downloading it when the power went out. It was 75% downloaded. Then when things came back and I tried to downloadd, it didn't work . After a gagillion calls to McAfee and many hours of brain numbing sleuthing on my own...I have eleminated all McAfee stuff and am ready to do it again except for one question I have and now both their phone numbers are not working...are they shut down by a bug themselves.

I am giving them until Wednesday to answer my plea for email help. Then I guess I'll go to Norton. I'm not an idiot, but this has been ridiculous!