French fighters grounded due to Windows virus

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One has to wonder how easy it is to remove military capability, without even using any conventional weapons.

Reply to
Ignoramus17377
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Whats the best way to kill a tank?

incapacitate the crew before they ever get into the tank.

A bit of drano in their water supply/beer/soft drinks/burgers may not kill them, but will prevent their multimillion dollar behemoth from going anywhere.

Im sure you get the idea.

Always strike at the weak links.

Which is why intelligent partisans and asyemetrical warfare is so effective.

Gunner

"Not so old as to need virgins to excite him, nor old enough to have the patience to teach one."

Reply to
Gunner Asch

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When I worked for the Navy as a machinist, I had the "additional duty" of ISSO - Information Systems Security Officer.

This was in the days when most of the machines in the shop ran DOS 5.0, with the rare DOS 3.3 or Windows 3.1. All of the machines were on a LAN, but nothing connected to the outside world. My primary duties wearing that hat were to keep McAffee updated, inspect machines for unauthorized software (and attend the somewhat inane security meetings). The sole vector at the time was people bringing software in on floppies (which they had downloaded from a BBS).

A few years later, I looked back on that experience as a bygone era. Viruses just don't get transmitted that way anymore when the internet is so much more efficient. Ha. Now it's USB keys.

Reply to
Steve Ackman

Yep. Very insightful.

Reply to
Ignoramus17377

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I'm still wondering about that one... what exactly are people carrying around on said USB "keys"? Their pirated music is on their iPuds and most software won't run directly off a USB "key". I never carry stuff on a USB "key" as I am able to readily access whatever I might need from my home systems remotely over the 'net, even from inside the heavily firewalled corporate network.

Reply to
Pete C.

In Windows, a USB thumb drive can contain certain executables like autorun.exe, or some such, and Windows would automatically execute them. This is convenient under some assumptions, but not very safe if your thumb drive is made in China. There was a big scandal recently about USB thumb drives from China containing malware.

Reply to
Ignoramus17377

... or if your USB drive has been plugged into a machine carrying the virus.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

Yes, but that doesn't answer my question - What exactly are people carrying on these USB thumb drives? I'm just trying to figure out what the use is.

Reply to
Pete C.

My wife and I both use them for carrying work back and forth to home. I carry my passwords on mine -- double encrypted -- and some books I read in downtime. And I use it to carry large CAD files to a blueprint service when they're too large to print at home, when I want to see a preview in person before the file is printed.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I carry photos, ebooks, tech manuals, exploded parts diagrams, music etc on my 4gig thumbdrive. Lets say a client wants the programming section from one of the manuals...he simply plugs my drive in to his computer, and prints out the relevant portions. I do run virus scans on my flash drive virtually daily and have it set to read only when Im out in the field. Whenever its plugged into a computer other than my own...its "read only" so it prevents something on their system from getting back into my drive. And Im VERY cautious about my hardware. It only goes into one laptop, heavily sheilded, which has access to only one desktop, which is VERY VERY heavily sheilded

Works out just fine for portable data storage. You can get a shitload of data on a 4 gig $15 flash drive.

Gunner

"If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees."

Bill Clinton 1993-08-12

Reply to
Gunner Asch

Oh!

Ok, I have one for my cad stuff (16 Gig!) and another 16 gig for my iPod library.

Then two 8 gig with the coastal nav charts for the gulf coast (redundant) And another for the Columbia river charts.

I have four 8 gig for transferring movies from home to the ships computer. We don't take the DVDs out of the house. Too expensive to replace and too delicate to survive being tossed around the boat.

A 4 gig with setups for the laptops.

One is dedicated to legal documents.

Basically anything you'd put on a CD. Especially if it would take multiple CDs to cover it.

It that what you were asking?

Reply to
cavelamb

Yep, pretty much.

Reply to
Pete C.

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Not real hard when the ones involved IGNORE warnings to patch the problem over 4 months ago!

Typical of the French attitude though.

Reply to
Steve W.

Actually, U3 device USB's thumb drives emulate a cd device and get around the restriction on autoruns.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

A bunch of apps from

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A fairly large amount of documentation that is mine and not the companies that helps me in my work.

Then there are personal files, I want to get to at break w/o putting them on a company system.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

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They may have had some reasons. Such as worrying about stability of latest updates, for example. Possibly it was merely negligence.

Reply to
Ignoramus17377

The French????

Nah........never.......

"If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees."

Bill Clinton 1993-08-12

Reply to
Gunner Asch

the restriction

Good reason to uninstall and then delete U3.

I can't get Knoppix to boot from a thumb drive.

jw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

restriction

Its usually motherboard bios dependant. Most older Bios will not look at a USB port until much later in the boot process

Gunner

"If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees."

Bill Clinton 1993-08-12

Reply to
Gunner Asch

By the way, it is not limited to French fighter planes.

Employer of a "person who I know well" has been hit by a Windows virus today, and their computer operation is out at the moment.

Reply to
Ignoramus17377

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