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Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

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Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#41
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit, imgur, news sites. It was via an ad delivered over an ad network, so who knows really.

How come the adblocker didn't block the ad network?

I blame the ad blocker / ad network arms race.

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#42
post #34

Too bad it's not like Microsoft's Longhorn - then it would have been delivered years late as a shadow of it's promised self (Vista) ;)

Yeah, when I read the headline I was puzzled. "What has a canned MS project got to do with Symantec?" God I'm so old.

Man, I miss those days too. Some of the most creative UX experiments came out of the Windows team back then. Too bad they couldn't get any of it to build worth a damn.

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#43
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Don't run day to day with local admin

Many people say that the first thing they do is disable UAC. One person even told me that people who know what they are doing disable UAC. Not sure what to think of these people

UAC isn't the same thing as local admin.

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#44

>On one occasion a computer in the United States was compromised but, following infection, an uninstaller was launched within hours, which may indicate this victim was infected unintentionally. How do they know that?

Its Symantec, they run AV on thousands of computers across the globe. All the events generated from these computers get sent to them. Removal/cleaning procedures would be one of those events, probably for this very reason (i.e creator gets sloppy, installs and then uninstalls on their own machine).

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#45
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people say that the first thing they do is disable UAC. One person even told me that people who know what they are doing disable UAC. Not sure what to think of these people

Well, I think this picture sums up a lot of thoughts on this subject: https://xkcd.com/1200/ In a nutshell, your user account has all your data, all your session cookies, all your logins and passwords, all your documents.... Everything. And what can root/Administrator do? That's right, play with device drivers and systems stuffs. Once you have the primary user's account, unless it's a multiuser system, it's game over…

Lack of root makes being stealthy and covering tracks more difficult. Log clearing almost always requires elevation. If getting owned is a given (and it is) then the most important thing is detection after the fact.

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#46
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think this picture sums up a lot of thoughts on this subject: https://xkcd.com/1200/ In a nutshell, your user account has all your data, all your session cookies, all your logins and passwords, all your documents.... Everything. And what can root/Administrator do? That's right, play with device drivers and systems stuffs. Once you have the primary user's account, unless it's a multiuser system, it's game over…

Lack of root makes being stealthy and covering tracks more difficult. Log clearing almost always requires elevation. If getting owned is a given (and it is) then the most important thing is detection after the fact.

Depending on what magnitude of "after" you mean, of course.

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people say that the first thing they do is disable UAC. One person even told me that people who know what they are doing disable UAC. Not sure what to think of these people

That's because UAC in windows is worthless, it's a broken version of sudo that fails to do the one thing necessary, force a re-authentication of credentials. There's little point in popping up a warning than people can simply click right past without requiring admin credentials.

sudo as root usually doesn't ask for password either.

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#48
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because UAC in windows is worthless, it's a broken version of sudo that fails to do the one thing necessary, force a re-authentication of credentials. There's little point in popping up a warning than people can simply click right past without requiring admin credentials.

sudo as root usually doesn't ask for password either.

sudo as root is unnecessary, sudo only makes sense for non root accounts; and sudo prompts the user for his own password ensuring that even someone that walks up to your computer can't perform root actions just because you're logged in and ensuring the user can't simply click without thinking which is what everyone does on windows which is why UAC is so often disabled.

Re: Symantec found evidence of Longhorn against 40 targets spread in 16 countries

#49
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because UAC in windows is worthless, it's a broken version of sudo that fails to do the one thing necessary, force a re-authentication of credentials. There's little point in popping up a warning than people can simply click right past without requiring admin credentials.

It works if you have a separate admin account. Then at least you have to enter its credentials, if not your own.

Yes, but then you aren't doing things in your own account with temporarily elevated privadledges which is the intent of UAC, it's supposed to be like sudo.
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