John Bowen said:
I found the source of my problems and fixed it finally. I was connected to a
dial up modem and after about 15 minutes somebody came in on port 137
Whatever happened to the assertion that "I'm not on a network
or even dialed in." then?
and since I was sharing my C drive with the Internet they were reinfecting me
with Opaserve (all variations from A to V).
Sheesh! (okay - I'll be nice)
This worm does not come into your system via an email.
Right, it is a networking thing. However, if you are not on a
network (or even dialed in) then it wouldn't matter much
that you also are up to date with critical patches and AV
software.
It comes because somebody else
....with an equally ludicrous security scheme...
....or network worm
is pinging away with different IP addresses until they find somebody connected
to the Internet and sharing their C drive without a password.
....or an equally insufficient one (guessable or unpatched)
I was doing
this because I have 5 PCs and I wanted easy access to files.
There is no good excuse for this behavior. The problem is that
many users are not (nor do they consider themselves to be)
administrators of their own systems.
I learned my lesson thanks to a description of the fix by Brad Peterson.
Imo, the lesson is far more important than the specific fix. Worms
such as this help to point out the error in the way [too] many people
have their computers configured.
All the software tools were doing was removing the virus
Removal tools are *supposed* to do just that. Keeping your
machine secure is not their job (care to guess whos job it is?)
and then I was being reinfected again from the Internet.
Had it not been for this worm opening your eyes to security matters,
you would have been offering your computer's resources to anyone
willing to grab it.
Not a *good* thing at all.
The latest virus Sasser discovered
yesterday does pretty much the same thing. It doesn't require an email
attachment to load into your computer.
Many worms are not e-mail vector worms. The sheer number
of e-mail vector worms makes the public think that *all* viruses
and worms are related to e-mail. It is simply not the case, as you
have apparently just found out.
I guess I'll have to revisit my attitude about a firewall as being too
complex and unnecessary in a home.
That is another story. Far better would be to use an old PC as
a dedicated firewall (educational as well as functional), or get
a full featured router.
Anyway, glad you got it all sorted out - and learning more about
security is always a plus.
