[Tfug] Ideas for the ultimate "Grandma Millie" distro...

[Jim March]

Couple of points here...

I too ran WinXP with every possible M$ patch/update/protection, and then
applied a paid-up and up-to-date Zonealarm.  Also avoided M$ browser/mail
apps, ran Firefox/Thunderbird.  Didn't matter - something came crawling in
my pipe and hosed me good.  Spent two days just trying to figure out what
was in there - it gave lots of indications of being a botnet critter.
Finally just backed it up, nuked it and started with Ubuntu Dapper, never
looked back.

I have every reason to believe that while running XP correctly will HELP,
it's no guarantee.  And for what I keep on my laptop, data I really care
about...nope.  Not where I wanna be, thanks anyways Mr. Gate$.

In the case I just finished yesterday, it was eerily similar.  Weird
glitches, and the XP firewall was turned hard OFF with all options grayed
out - very abnormal.  Threw Blacklight at it, nothing.  Rootkit Revealer
flat-out froze solid, deer in the headlights time.

Now I've *never* seen Rootkit Revealer crash.  It's really a dead-simple
app.  I had to assume that something already in memory was looking for
it....esp. when combined with all the other clues.

---

The face of malware is changing.  Now that it's possible to make money with
malware, the level of "perverse professionalism" is way up.  They're not
pranks, they're all too often systematic takeover attempts and they don't
like being dislodged one bit.  One new trend is for malware to act as a very
good anti-malware barrier to everything else to avoid anybody else stomping
on their "turf" and also prevent the user boogging down enough to nuke all
the crap on there.

That's just...insane.  If you were back in the '50s or '60s and wrote a
scifi story about what's actually happening you'd be labeled a loon right up
there with L. Ron Hubbard.

Fer chrissakes, when do we say "enough"?

Jim