virus

Last 48 hours was 'wasted' for virus attack.

Luckily I still enjoy the learning part.

My Windows computer friends was infected by some virus wellknown as 'brontok'. In Indonesian, this word have awful phonetic meaning. It's sound closely like 'rontok' which mean falling down. Such as the falling down of leaves from the tree branch or the hair from the skullskin. If that word applied to computer, wow!

So, this virus creates false folder named similar with real folder from the computer. Just like another trendy virus, it actualy not a folder at all. It's a living program, with *.exe. If the computer 'folder option' set with 'show file extension', you can see the exe extension. For you who use Linux, you'll never see it as folder ofcourse. he he he.

So what's the damage part? the computer will feeled slower. And it's very very contagious. Flashdisk will be it's major vehicle.

I still can understand that some people really need to use Microsoft Windows (which is badly hited by a lot of virus, but for regular user which use regular application for regular task such us office application, sounds like that will be a lot safer for them to use Linux.

Another friend of mine, ask me if I could erased a virus from her floppy disk. Fortunately I brought my Debian Knoppix 3.2 Live CD with 2.4.21 kernel. So just boot live, and erase it from that floppy. Oh, it's not that easy man!

The computer I got there didn't support vesa driver enclosed by 3.2 Knoppix. So I logged in in text mode. Then I renew the password. I had experience that it will be needed to renew password for some 'root' activity.

mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

ls

ha!

Look at that. yes there is ~Temp45.doc that suspected as virus by her, but we also had 'tugas akhir.exe'. Obviously that was another virus. I think that file will displayed as folder in Microsoft Windows.

I tried to recover that file just in case it was a real MS Word file. So I copied it with another name tugasakhir.doc and erased the original file.

She then speculatifly open her floppy on her windows98 with AVG virus detector.

So? AVG deleted that doc file because it clasified the file as a trojan.

hmmmp-----..... confusing. Which one shoul be blame. The virus creator, the windows user, the community that trap in one major operating system, or me myself that too busy to worry about enjoyable things.

By the way, you should try XOSL. Extended Operating Sistem L....... It is a small program that stay on the MBR part of the HD and give something like LILO or GRUB ( I guess it deeper than them) and offer which OS do you want to boot with.