Is there a new Bug/Virus?

[Hessy]

I am very aware of attacks. Usually I use Virtual PC to connect to the
internet and then just discard the connections. But I failed and some
weird virus attacked me. When I rebooted the computer told me the partion
table was wrong. I boot from an exstended partition so the virus only
messed with the table. I had XP to delete the partition - create a new
partition - and used Ghost to bring it back to life without any loss. XP
places its main files on the primary partition since I boot from the
extended - nothing lost except for minimal things not backed-up before the
attack.

I am not a professional - just a user since 1985 or so - is there something
outside attacking folks now?

thanks

 

[Twayne]

I am very aware of attacks. Usually I use Virtual PC to connect to
the internet and then just discard the connections. But I failed and
some weird virus attacked me. When I rebooted the computer told me
the partion table was wrong. I boot from an exstended partition so
the virus only messed with the table. I had XP to delete the
partition - create a new partition - and used Ghost to bring it back
to life without any loss. XP places its main files on the primary
partition since I boot from the extended - nothing lost except for
minimal things not backed-up before the attack.

I am not a professional - just a user since 1985 or so - is there
something outside attacking folks now?

thanks

Umm, of course! It's not "now" though, it's "always has been" since the
90's. is now, always has been and always shall be, sort of thing. I
don't see how a person could even be just a user and still not know
about drive-by and all the noise on the 'net constantly passing you.
I tend to doubt you've been attacked but you've given zero info to
make any judgements on, so ... nothing to say there. Unles of course
you're running without anti-virus software and a firewall of any kind.
VM or not, its' folly to rely solely on a vmware connection to protect
you. It's good but it's not perfect.
Twayne

 

[Danny Krychek]

I am not a professional - just a user since 1985 or so - is there something
outside attacking folks now?

Have you been sleeping - ala Rip Van Winkle - for a while?

 

[Hessy]

Umm, of course! It's not "now" though, it's "always has been" since the
90's. is now, always has been and always shall be, sort of thing. I
don't see how a person could even be just a user and still not know
about drive-by and all the noise on the 'net constantly passing you.
I tend to doubt you've been attacked but you've given zero info to
make any judgements on, so ... nothing to say there. Unles of course
you're running without anti-virus software and a firewall of any kind.
VM or not, its' folly to rely solely on a vmware connection to protect
you. It's good but it's not perfect.
Twayne

In answering you it is my way of doing to insulate from the world. Back
in Win31 days I learned to make a partition and put all important data on
the other side of the disk. I would reformat the partition daily - so I
cared less what happened to it. Then with Win95 I learned to boot from a
CD to ram only and again did not care. 98FE and 98SE brought in
Connectix VPC and also VMWare. Now you have Microsoft VPC which is the
old Connectix and it seems to be a perfect firewall. I was attacked
because I did not connect to the net through VPC as I was lazy. In any
event it is my fault - but thankfully all this thing did was was attact
the FAT and since it had no idea how my allocation of space actually is -
it just screwed up me for a bit. XP2 wiped out the partition I use and
created a new FAT for me so I could re-ghost. I have 2TB of data over 4
disks and the little partition is 16gb on a 40gb drive - so meaningless
loss. but still

First time anything attacked the FAT direct.

thanks for answering.

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Hessy" <[email protected]>




| In answering you it is my way of doing to insulate from the world. Back
| in Win31 days I learned to make a partition and put all important data on
| the other side of the disk. I would reformat the partition daily - so I
| cared less what happened to it. Then with Win95 I learned to boot from a
| CD to ram only and again did not care. 98FE and 98SE brought in
| Connectix VPC and also VMWare. Now you have Microsoft VPC which is the
| old Connectix and it seems to be a perfect firewall. I was attacked
| because I did not connect to the net through VPC as I was lazy. In any
| event it is my fault - but thankfully all this thing did was was attact
| the FAT and since it had no idea how my allocation of space actually is -
| it just screwed up me for a bit. XP2 wiped out the partition I use and
| created a new FAT for me so I could re-ghost. I have 2TB of data over 4
| disks and the little partition is 16gb on a 40gb drive - so meaningless
| loss. but still

| First time anything attacked the FAT direct.

| thanks for answering.

I seriously doubt that anything was attacked and this was related to a "virus" or any
malware.

 

[Hessy]

From: "Hessy" <[email protected]>





| In answering you it is my way of doing to insulate from the world.
| Back in Win31 days I learned to make a partition and put all
| important data on the other side of the disk. I would reformat the
| partition daily - so I cared less what happened to it. Then with
| Win95 I learned to boot from a CD to ram only and again did not care.
| 98FE and 98SE brought in Connectix VPC and also VMWare. Now you
| have Microsoft VPC which is the old Connectix and it seems to be a
| perfect firewall. I was attacked because I did not connect to the
| net through VPC as I was lazy. In any event it is my fault - but
| thankfully all this thing did was was attact the FAT and since it had
| no idea how my allocation of space actually is - it just screwed up
| me for a bit. XP2 wiped out the partition I use and created a new
| FAT for me so I could re-ghost. I have 2TB of data over 4 disks and
| the little partition is 16gb on a 40gb drive - so meaningless loss.
| but still

| First time anything attacked the FAT direct.

| thanks for answering.

I seriously doubt that anything was attacked and this was related to a
"virus" or any malware.

I do not want to keep bugging people - but when the BIOS states upon boot
File Allocation Table not correct and does not allow boot - then it is an
attack or the hardware is f'ng up. With the redundancy I have created as
a user - the hardware is not f'ng up. It was an attack. I only asked if
folks have found something. You guys make money - for me it is a hobby.

The computer would have been dead if I knew nothing.

I am going to let you guys go - if you do not see it yet - it may come,
and it was not malware - nor anything except because it had to come that
fashion JavaScript routine you allow through authorization. I disable
Java but allow JavaScript so that is the only way.

I will not answer any more. I will kill JavaScript on the Host computer
and allow the Guest Virtual Machines to use it.

thanks

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Hessy" <[email protected]>




| I do not want to keep bugging people - but when the BIOS states upon boot
| File Allocation Table not correct and does not allow boot - then it is an
| attack or the hardware is f'ng up. With the redundancy I have created as
| a user - the hardware is not f'ng up. It was an attack. I only asked if
| folks have found something. You guys make money - for me it is a hobby.


What money ?
I haven't seen any.

You are at best paraphrasing any messages seen.

Those systems that has a BIOS routine for so-called viruses were flawed and dropped yaers
ago.

How old is this PC ?
What BIOS ?
What is the EXACT message ?


| The computer would have been dead if I knew nothing.

| I am going to let you guys go -
| if you do not see it yet - it may come,
| and it was not malware - nor anything except
| because it had to come that
| fashion JavaScript routine you allow through
| authorization. I disable
| Java but allow JavaScript so that is the only way.

| I will
| not answer any more. I will kill JavaScript on the Host computer
| and allow the Guest
| Virtual Machines to use it.

| thanks

There are NO Javascript viruses that would modify partition tables.

How you connect the two is beyond me.

You wrote "I would reformat the partition daily"
That's too phunny. I will chalk this thread to an overabundance of paranoia.

 

[Twayne]

From: "Hessy" <[email protected]>





What money ?
I haven't seen any.

You are at best paraphrasing any messages seen.

Those systems that has a BIOS routine for so-called viruses were
flawed and dropped yaers ago.

How old is this PC ?
What BIOS ?
What is the EXACT message ?






There are NO Javascript viruses that would modify partition tables.

How you connect the two is beyond me.

You wrote "I would reformat the partition daily"
That's too phunny. I will chalk this thread to an overabundance of
paranoia.

I think I know now what he's talking about and it was a metodology in
high use at one time among the "super security" concious of the early
windows sysems. Unfortunately once it made it to the windows world
where things were so unstable anyway, it pretty much fell by the
wayside. It occurs to me he may either have an old main frame modified
to his usage or perhaps just a troll, but I'm not jumping on troll as
likely. I encountered a similar setup on an AS400 once; everything ran
in VMs on that one. I don't know about now, but I was told then that
"that's how it is".
It seems like a lot of hoops to jump thru to keep a machine secure
today but you can't argue it's not pretty much effective.
On the subject of javascript, it's full of holes and very susceptible
to variations of SQL injection, code injection, buffer overflows etc.,
that can allow unintended accesses. Anytime there is an input to the
client and a response to it, the response can be grabbed and compromised
if it's being watched. It's ironic that it's used for a lot of
security work IMO by many, not realizing that not everyone who comes in
will have js running.
Oh well, just my 2 ¢. Interesting if nothing else.

Twayne