Kazy paid a visit! Luckily not my PC!!

I wonder if any of you have made aquaintance of Generative Variant Kazy. What a menace.
 
It's a malware that can (if I have understood correctly what I've read) hide for example inside a pdf-file, and trick you protection software enough to get onto your screen as a virus-warning, for example, and then download a trojan.
It attacked the PC of a friend. Simultaneously the protection software announced it had spotted the intruder and it is eliminated, but that was about two seconds too late.
 
It made the whole Documents and Settings-folder disappear in about ten seconds. The whole user account and everything related disappeared from the screen. Pressing Window-E I could open "My Computer"-view, just to see that all files and folders were reported empty. Then I could sneak in through the kitchen door using Nokias media synchrozing application Ovi, and I could verify, that the data had not been physically destroyed, and seemingly, I could copy data on a memory stick. The stick showed exactly the same amount of content that was transferred, but tryin to open the files I got a "This file is empty"-message.
 
Luckily, I could help her out by salvaging the data using a Linux based Knoppix-disc. The whole drive had to be formatted.
 
What's especially annoying here is, that the person, as well as I am, was using F-Secures protection software, which is about the best, heaviest and most expensive there is. So, you really can't be sure about any post or files you receive..I'm even more convinced now that having no internet on my music PC is the right decision, even though I take care of my backups. What if the backup HDD is connected when this malware attacks!!?? Heartattack, stroke...younameit!!

I was recently at a chamber of commerce meeting in Birmingham Ala where the featured speaker (who was interrupted by a visiting politician running in the republican primary) was the official digital security advisor to the president of the United States. I forget his name and official title but he was described as the top guy in the USA.

He was speaking about cyber security and the impact on business.

He illustrated an example where SONY Playstation's network was compromised and some info was leaked. He stressed that while no one's credit card info was taken, the news caused a disruption of confidence and he showed how SONY's world wide stock dropped to half it's value in rapid response. His point was that a segment of a very large and diversified international corporation had a security leak in one of its business ventures and the result was the net worth of the entire company plummeted to half it's value.

I just snickered and thought about the foolish advice I get from the guys at Roland (a company that is worth approximately 1/3, on a good day, of what it was worth 3 years ago) who question why I will not put my lively hood at risk by connecting my DAW to the internet. I am bemused when the Roland staff postures as if they know something I don't know about cyber security.

I know enough to know you never know what's next.


Thanks for sharing the story Kalle.

best regards,
mike

I think I followed you.

I feel more comfortable with a habit of surfing on a system that I can afford to have destroyed... and transferring stuff manually to other systems after it seems to be safe.

I guess many people only have a single system and there's not much choice.


best regards,
mike

Just to be safe I print all of the forum posts before I read them.