JamminJoeyB
06-17-2005, 10:04 AM
My cousin works for a family owned paging company. The apps they use are closed source and propietary. Not really a big deal. But they also have a web page that will allow you to send pages. Part of the hourly system checks is to ensure this is working.
Well they system they check this on (or the internet computer as they call it) is running windows 98 on a broad band connection. This system had a little protection from virii by norton until one of the other people there disabled it becuase she couldn't do something. This coupled with the fact that she is surfing xxx rated sites on work time. There is no firewall (hardware or software) or router at this place and the IT guy doesn't really have a clue.
Given the above information you can guess that this pc is riddled with spyware, and lord knows what else. It's got so many processes running that trying to do anything on the net is like being on 14.4 dial up. Along with crashing on a hourly basis.
To make my cousin's life easier I gave her a cd with morphix light gui on it to use when she has had enough. I showed her on her pc how it worked and how to launch firefox and some other features. She's had this cd about 2 months and the straw that broke the camels back happened last night.
She said just rebooting the pc now launches a flurry of xxx rated popups and it takes 5 minutes to get a to a point where she can load ie. So she rebooted into morphix and gave me a call to get some quick info and had a rather un eventful night from then on. No pupups, no crashes, just up and running with out any head aches. At the end of her shift she rebooted back into win98, popups and all.
This is truely sad. This is probably one of those compromised systems that is probably responsible for DDOS attacks and the spread of other malware. I'm just glad they do not keep any business records on this thing.
I've asked her to have the guy they hired to do IT to give me a call so I can suggest some courses of action to take to clean this pc up, but it's fallen on deaf ears.
I normally don't suggest people just go around running live cd distros on other peoples pcs, but I felt this was a case where I would make an exception.
Knowing the role of this pc it's clear that a live cd distro would be the best choice. So even if the girl that likes to surf xxx sites keeps her job the system won't be hit with a ton of spyware and a weather forcast that calls the 5 inches of popus.
Well they system they check this on (or the internet computer as they call it) is running windows 98 on a broad band connection. This system had a little protection from virii by norton until one of the other people there disabled it becuase she couldn't do something. This coupled with the fact that she is surfing xxx rated sites on work time. There is no firewall (hardware or software) or router at this place and the IT guy doesn't really have a clue.
Given the above information you can guess that this pc is riddled with spyware, and lord knows what else. It's got so many processes running that trying to do anything on the net is like being on 14.4 dial up. Along with crashing on a hourly basis.
To make my cousin's life easier I gave her a cd with morphix light gui on it to use when she has had enough. I showed her on her pc how it worked and how to launch firefox and some other features. She's had this cd about 2 months and the straw that broke the camels back happened last night.
She said just rebooting the pc now launches a flurry of xxx rated popups and it takes 5 minutes to get a to a point where she can load ie. So she rebooted into morphix and gave me a call to get some quick info and had a rather un eventful night from then on. No pupups, no crashes, just up and running with out any head aches. At the end of her shift she rebooted back into win98, popups and all.
This is truely sad. This is probably one of those compromised systems that is probably responsible for DDOS attacks and the spread of other malware. I'm just glad they do not keep any business records on this thing.
I've asked her to have the guy they hired to do IT to give me a call so I can suggest some courses of action to take to clean this pc up, but it's fallen on deaf ears.
I normally don't suggest people just go around running live cd distros on other peoples pcs, but I felt this was a case where I would make an exception.
Knowing the role of this pc it's clear that a live cd distro would be the best choice. So even if the girl that likes to surf xxx sites keeps her job the system won't be hit with a ton of spyware and a weather forcast that calls the 5 inches of popus.