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from the when-is-it-EVER-safe-to-click-an-e-mail-link? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
With the end of support for Windows 7 coming in January, many users are looking to update to Windows 10 to continue getting security updates and support from Microsoft. According to a Tuesday report from security firm Trustwave, attackers are well aware of this and are targeting Microsoft users with fake Windows update emails that will infect computers with ransomware -- an especially sinister type of malware that locks up valuable data on your computer, and demands that you pay a ransom to release it or your data will be destroyed.
The spammers are sending some Windows users emails with subject lines "Install Latest Microsoft Windows Update now!" or "Critical Microsoft Windows Update!" The emails, which claim to be from Microsoft, include one sentence in the message body, which starts with two capital letters, Trustwave found. They ask recipients to click an attachment to download the "latest critical update."
The attachment has a .jpg file extension, but is actually a malicious .NET downloader, which will deliver malware to your machine. The ransomware, called bitcoingenerator.exe, encrypts the recipient's files, and leaves a ransom note titled "Cyborg_DECRYPT.txt" on their desktop, asking for $500 in bitcoin to unlock the files.
[...] "This is a very common type of phishing attack -- where the attacker tries to convince the target to open a malicious attachment," Karl Sigler, threat intelligence manager of Trustwave SpiderLabs, said in an email. "Windows users should understand that Microsoft will never send patches via email, but rather use their internal update utility embedded in every current Windows operating system. Users should always be wary of any unsolicited emails, especially those that present urgency to open attachments or click on links."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 22 2019, @01:32AM (10 children)
Luckily, FreeBSD is a thing, as is OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenIndiana, and a slew of init-respecting Linux distros. I'm back on Gentoo after finally acquiring a machine with some decent CPU grunt under the hood, but last I checked Slackware, Artix, Devuan, Void, and several others are alive and well.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday November 22 2019, @01:44AM (9 children)
Thank you for the inspiration- I'll have to try some of them. I'm a long-time Slacky, but for me, package management is the weakest aspect of most distros. How do you feel about package management in those distros?
I've been running Alpine on a few servers and I love it, except for package management... I don't need GUI, but something with categories would be good.
(Score: 4, Informative) by coolgopher on Friday November 22 2019, @01:54AM (3 children)
Having used Linux distros with either of rpm and deb package management, I find myself preferring the deb using distros. I used to be a FreeBSD user, and still would be if I didn't need to use Linux for work. The FreeBSD ports tree was great. Anything you wanted, configured the way you wanted, and built just for you. Quite like Gentoo, but a fair bit smoother. Then FreeBSD started providing pre-built packages via the pkg tool, and you got the best of both worlds - build stuff you want/need custom configured for easily, and just slurp in pre-built packages for the regular stuff. These days I'm pretty much exclusively on Devuan, and I haven't got many complaints.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday November 22 2019, @03:04AM
I did try Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and other .deb distros, but didn't stick with them. Got into all kinds of Arch, puppy, Slitaz, and other streamlined ones for a while, mainly because of a major project that needed very fast boot, etc. Used to hate rpm but was forced into it 12 years ago, found yum right away, and it's tolerable. The GUI package managers SUCK for CentOS. Just horrible. I did find and use a yum GUI (yumex) that worked well, but haven't in years because I don't run X on the servers. I do occasionally run an X server on another machine so I can run the gui application without running X on the actual server.
Gosh, you guys, maybe someday I'll break down and try FreeBSD and never turn back! Anyone port FreeBSD to a phone?
I will try Devuan, thanks. Been hearing about it for years of course.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday November 22 2019, @04:50AM (1 child)
OH! The old "I need to use Windows for work" excuse! And probably for games. But wait, something is wrong. . . OMG! It is finally the year of "linux at work"!!! Hooray!!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by coolgopher on Friday November 22 2019, @06:17AM
Well I do dual-boot into Windows. For games. Just not at work.
I used to have Steam installed on my Linux side, but I had compatibility issues due to not running Duhbuntu, so I gave up on that. Maybe it's better these days. Not like I've got much time for games these days anyway.
In terms of primary OS-at-work, my history (per job) looks something like:
NT 4.0 (brrr)
Solaris 8/9 (whee)
Win2k (errgh, so sloooow)
Linux (sweeet)
Linux (sweeet)
Linux with WinXP64 VM (meh)
Linux (sweeet)
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Friday November 22 2019, @01:57AM (4 children)
slackpkg is flawless. All you have to do is pick a mirror in the conf file.
The install is lightning fast, and you can avoid installing any GUI if your want. The setup is very simple
So far nothing comes close to Slackware. It still comes with the Netscape browser
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday November 22 2019, @02:56AM
Thank you for the inspiration. For me SlackWare is rock-solid, even when I compile my own kernels. :o I learned and modded the init system from the start (1995ish). I thought I had tried slackpkg but maybe not... I will.
Wasn't aware about Netscape! I don't remember seeing it in the package tree... Wow, that brings back memories. For some reason I think I used to use Netscape to get pop3 mail, but saved it to a pine (alpine) directory and used pine for email. Fetchmail was too fiddly when Netscape would do it for me. I think I did it that way, anyway...
(Score: 2, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 22 2019, @03:05AM (2 children)
If you're not building from tarballs and spending all day in dependency hell, you're doing Slackware wrong.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Saturday November 23 2019, @01:21AM (1 child)
I thought that was Gentoo??
I was so pissed when my laptop got stolen the week after I'd done a major upgrade of Gentoo on it! I hope the thief enjoyed the Norwegian keyboard...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 23 2019, @02:27AM
Nah, Gentoo has had package management for like ever. Slackware still didn't unless you downloaded the tarball and built it last I checked.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.