Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Fri Jun 8 13:13:16 CDT 2012
I do not know whether I like the idea of all computers just becoming dumb terminals. The whole concept of the Personal Computer is disappearing and personal privacy and rights, it affords, along with it. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John Bartow Sent: Friday, June 08, 2012 10:39 AM To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues' Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Printer virus In the short: no. In the long: yes. In the paranoid: big brother's cohesive effort to force us to the cloud where they have complete control. -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence Sent: Friday, June 08, 2012 11:49 AM To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues' Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Printer virus Changing the subject slight, but still concerned with Malware. We are about to go through a major change as our old BIOS standards chips are about to change. Most (all) new ASUS motherboards come with this new "BIOS" chip now called the EFI or Extensible Firmware Interface chip. It has the capacity to hold a large amount executable code, run that code and even be able to flash under program control. Linux and the open source community increased their effort to develop a replacement for proprietary BIOSes and their future incarnations with an open sourced counterpart through the coreboot and OpenBIOS/Open Firmware projects. The new Microsoft windows version have been reported to code these chips to their OS, be able to do activation from within the chip or even render their product inoperative if unsupported or unlicensed application are found on their system. There is a concern that Windows may not allow dual booting. As these new BIOS chips are fully flashable and even have RAM space on them, they will be a prime target for hackers, malware products, a battle ground for OS security and even electric static. If anything goes wrong with these chips will our VA software be capable of defending a system or even recovering a system after it has been "bricked"? Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John Bartow Sent: Friday, June 08, 2012 8:44 AM To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues' Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Printer virus You guys still using McAfee? Really? Anyway, keep us up to date. I haven't any reports of this happening yet. -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jon Tydda Sent: Friday, June 08, 2012 9:36 AM To: Off Topic; Dba-Tech Subject: [dba-Tech] Printer virus Hi all, we've been experiencing problems today across all our sites (worldwide) with printers spooling out reams of paper with random ASCII characters all over them, reminiscent of the Bugbear virus from about 10 years ago. It's not just us, there's lots of Internet traffic about this, it's happening everywhere. See https://community.mcafee.com/thread/45989?start=0 for more details. Importantly as ever, keep your anti-virus up to date and active. Jon _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com