Has anyone been receiving more spam or virus threats?

by MitaMan on 04/30/2004 22:31, 53 messages, last message: 05/17/2004 05:07, 18968 views, last view: 05/18/2024 21:20

From MitaMAN,
This may seem a strange place to talk about this but I really need to know. I'm fairly new to CUBE, been coming to this forum only since january 2004. I never had trouble with spam, attached viruses, returned mail that I never sent, etc... until I started coming to this forum. Every day I get tons of "fake" email with viruses in attachements. Thank goodness my ISP checks for this along with the preventive stuff I do. Nothing bad has happened to my computer but, I feel someone, somehow has stolen my cyber identity from this forum. My surfing habits have not changed (except for CUBE), I don't visit porn or crack sites.
Does anyone have a similar problem? I enjoy coming here to read what you guys say and to post my own opinions. I never could have made my (3) maps without the information on this forum.
Am I crazy to suspect I've been "violated" on this forum? Any opinions?
MitaMAN

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#14: Re: ..

by Thalion on 05/01/2004 10:08, refers to #9

An old P100-32Mb with FreeBSD installed on it serves as a very nice router/firewall. Then you can forget about Blaster and all that =)

Oh, and concealing your IP address is "security through obscurity", which never actually works. You'd better make your system secure enough to withstand an attack.

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#15: router

by Drakker_ on 05/01/2004 14:37

I prefer hardware router, software routers, however good the OS its running, will never be as safe as an hardware router because there's all kind of services that must run to take care of the computer devices not found in hardware router. Less is a lot more when it comes to routers.

I highly doubt "hackers" will ruin your fun MitaMAN, its "crackers" that are evil... hackers are just very good programmers like Aard. :)

And if you dont want to bother with all the virus, worms and crap, just don't run windows. Install Linux or get a Mac, simple as that.

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#16: Re: router

by Thalion on 05/01/2004 17:57, refers to #15

My router is not just a router... runs a caching proxy as well, does proxy chaining for me (to get past the institute firewall), and then I also use it to test-run my PHP stuff on Apache under FreeBSD since it's quite often what the target platform is.

"Services to take care of hardware devices" are just drivers - and those aren't exposed to the network, so it's pretty hard to remotely exploit a driver =) And services - well, I trust FreeBSD firewall enough for that. Otherwise, it's pretty stable - haven't crashed once yet (56 days uptime, I rebooted it once). And hey, it's fun =)

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#17: Re: router

by D.plomat on 05/01/2004 19:56, refers to #15

Agree with Thalion, you can do more useful things like adding traffic shaping or similar, content-based filtering, which is unlikely to be done by a cheap hw router.

Also about things you think you have on an OS, if you don't need extra features, you can use a minimalist OS like i do: with busybox and a kernel on a 486, it's system is only 5Mb (and could even be smaller if i was less lazy ;)
...It doesn't host any service so a nessus scan of it is totally blank :)

And you shouldn't assume hw routers are invulnerable... several have known holes and probably Linux/BSD kernels are much more security-tested than firmware of those routers (which are sometime modified versions of those OSes and others, but you have less control on it than a host you build from scratch)

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#18: ..

by Nekrodeth on 05/01/2004 19:57

mita-man just get a good firewall.Zone alarm is a good one,and has a free version too.FreeBSD and linux are more secure than windows,but if you have a good firewall you will probally be fine.If you are receiving all kinds of crap in e-mail you should not list your email when you post.Or just use a e-mail acount you don't care about,this is what I do ;)

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#19: Re: router

by jcdpc on 05/01/2004 20:02, refers to #17

5 MEG! thats amazing windows is 100 times that!

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#20: Free Anti-virus

by D.plomat on 05/01/2004 20:04

AntiVir Personal edition is cool also, i prefer it over AVG.

http://www.free-av.com/

However if you have a 'Server' windows version it'll refuse to install on it.

About the SPAM, for me it's the same as before i knew Cube. e-mails displayed are already - AT - NOSPAMed so mail collector bots won't get them here. Unless some loser manually collected them, they didn't got it from here.
About the virus, it's probably netsky, it choses random faked sender address when it sends itself, this also explains you receive "undeliverable mail", probably someone having your address on his machine is infected so sometimes the virus on his machine uses your adress when it spoofs the sender address, so when ISPs software filters out virus, they see those mails af if they were sent by you, and they send you the "undeliverable mail" message.

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#21: More Free Virus Software

by pushplay on 05/01/2004 21:21

http://www.avast.com/

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#22: Re: router

by Drakker_ on 05/01/2004 23:50, refers to #17

Of course, you are right, but keep in mind that if someone gets in a hw router, there's not much he can do but forward trafic. If someone gets in a freebsd or linux machine... then things can get really bad. It's all a matter of what you can do once you are in. You can't install anything in a hw router, but in a software one, you can do anything.

If you are shopping for a cheap hw router, never take a new model, buy an older one who has a great track record. Asante routers come to mind.

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#23: Re: router

by D.plomat on 05/02/2004 01:26, refers to #22

> in a hw router, there's not much he can do but forward trafic.

same thing on my 5Mb mini-linux, one can eventually use read-only medias, and an enough restricted set of installed commands.

Of course, if someone uses a vanilla RedHat install or other generic oriented distro, they don't have optimal security, but many ppl even use the net-sharing option of W2K/XP to use a windows box as router, so of course for those ppl wanting a shared internet connection set-up in some minutes, it'd be better if they stick to using an hw router instead of using a desktop OS(be it Linux or Windows) as router.

Totally agree on avoiding too recent hardware/software.

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#24: Re: router

by D.plomat on 05/02/2004 01:43, refers to #19

an i even have a 1,44Mb one on a floppy... of course there's nothing much you can do, except using it for repair/backup, and there's no network support...

don't remember the name, but someone showed me some years ago a full OS on a single floppy with network support, graphical UI and even a browser!

The linux equivalent is still 50Mb on a credit-card CD:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

One funny challenge would be making a "damn small Cube" on a bootable 80mm CD with Cube and an XServer with all existing modules for OpenGL and audio cards, and an auto-detect script ;)

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#25: Re: router

by jcdpc on 05/02/2004 01:47, refers to #24

I bet you could fit every map ever made for cube on one of those credit card disk. "damn small big cube"

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#26: Re: router

by D.plomat on 05/02/2004 01:53, refers to #25

Yes, the maps are damn smalls... the thing we can save space on is replacing the oggs by mods and midi.

about the 50Mb creditcard CD, i don't think we can put an XFree with all modules in the remaining of 50Mb minus Linux base system and Cube, so we'll need a 80mm CD (180Mb i think)... so probably we'll have enough space left to keep the oggs and include every map :)

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#27: Re: router

by D.plomat on 05/02/2004 01:56, refers to #26

every map... and probably every mod and every model etc... yeah, damn small big Cube ;)

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#28: damn small big cube

by jcdpc on 05/02/2004 02:22

do you want to start on it? I could gather up all the maps since I have a list on my site and i have big cube so i can get piglets maps, i've had some experince with autorun scripts before too, but i would need some of those little disks and they probably cost alot. We would need some sort of distribution system though...

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#29: Re: router #15 thread

by MitaMan on 05/02/2004 03:35, refers to #15

Hello Drakker,
Hacker, cracker, shmacker. Anyone that tries to screw someone else up is just plain bad (I'd use much stronger words but I don't want to be kicked off this forum). Aard is one of the good guys. Even I try to "figure things out" to learn how software works, but messing with others is wrong. Enough of my bable bable.
Anyway, I have only dialup and (1) computer hooked up. I leave my other machines off-line. Does a firewall have any real benefit for such a simple set-up? I feel better that I have AVG anti-virus installed, at least it got rid of stuff Macafee didn't find.
I did'nt mean to make a big deal about starting this thread, I just was curious if others had the same problem.
I want to thank everyone that answered this thread. MitaMAN

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#30: Re: router #15 thread

by jcdpc on 05/02/2004 03:39, refers to #29

hey if you hadn't started this thred we might have never gotten the idea for "DSBC"

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#31: Re: router #15 thread

by e:n:i:g:m:a on 05/02/2004 03:43, refers to #29

Drakker was just being technical...

"Technically," hackers ARE the good guys. They are programmers and tweakers that take their software and hardware apart to better understand it.

AND

"Technically," crakcers are hackers that use their skills to exploit computers, networks, and software in order to perpetrate criminal acts.

Today's Hacker steriotype is really a cracker by definition.

There you go!

-enigma

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#32: Re: router #15 thread

by MitaMan on 05/02/2004 04:59, refers to #31

Thanks for clearing it up. Now lets make some more maps (more SP Maps please please!) MitaMAN

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#33: ..

by staffy02 on 05/02/2004 05:14

And if you dont want to bother with all the virus, worms and crap, just don't run windows. Install Linux or get a Mac, simple as that.

do you know how hard it is to get linux where i live?

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