public service announcement #2

[egypturnash]

Windows is infested with viruses, judging by how often I hear news about yet another one popping up. It seems that the main cause of this is the fact that Windows, by default, ships with all kinds of things quite open, when they probably shouldn't be.

So: why not take a virus or three, and turn them into inoculations? Take advantage of the same security holes and spread, but instead of erasing the HD, close the holes. I have the impression that most of these holes can be closed by a simple but obscure preferences setting; MS in their infinite wisdom just ships their OS with all these prefs set to 'please abuse me'.

Bonus points for:

• popping up a warning that the user's system was open, and should be virus-checked
• having some mechanism for the administrator to say that, yes, these holes do need to be open for this installation.

Feel free to spread this idea in the direction of someone who may have the skills to make it happen. I certainly don't; I use OSX on a Mac.

Comments

[dour.livejournal.com]

You know, these days I run Windows with all the security preferences set to zero, and I have never once in my life EVER had a virus. (That's two decades worth of no viruses, mind.)

It's entirely a matter of knowing what's what. Most viruses are pretty obviously viruses, and the modern ones (based on scripting) are pathetically easy to avoid without any software intervention at all.

DON'T OPEN STRANGE ATTACHMENTS THAT HAVE NO REASON TO BE THERE.

DON'T RUN SOFTWARE FROM QUESTIONABLE SOURCES JUST BECAUSE A WEB POP-UP ASKED YOU TO.

I mean, good lord, FUCKING DUH.

*ahem* Anyway. Yes, one advantage to the Mac is that fewer people target it. *smirk*