[dba-Tech] Printer virus

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
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