The Most Unique Viruses of 2012 94
Orome1 writes "PandaLabs outlined its picks for the most unique viruses of the past year. Rather than a ranking of the most widespread viruses, or those that have caused most infections, these viruses are ones that deserve mention for standing out from the more than 24 million new strains of malware that emerged."
Most Unique? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shame on you Slashdot.
Re:Most Unique? (Score:5, Funny)
Uniquest would have been better.
Re:Most Unique? (Score:5, Funny)
Uniqueier
Re:Most Unique? (Score:4, Funny)
In other words:
Uniquest > Uniqueier > unique
I'm not 100% sure where "most unique" should be placed, but I think it would be the equivalent of "Uniquest".
Remember, there used to be only one type of "infinity" in math. Now someone just has to properly define different levels of "uniqueness".
(yeah, I'm not sure if this is a joke post either)
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"Uniquest" would be the superlative, so it would be a higher level of "unique" than "Uniqueier".
That's not how I remember it: Uniquest is a noun meaning a largely uneventful, yet expensive, life journey resulting ultimately in an attempt to convince others the quest had merit. Of said odysseys much prose is written. Once collected the verses sit in great libraries the size of small cities called universities, which are the quintessential starting point of uniquests -- the pair of terms are unique in language, each being recursively responsible for each the other's 'uni' prefix.
I'd tell tales of
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Or uniquest is the quest for the most unique. Which is the theme of the article.
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Wouldn't a uniquest be a single quest you undertook alone?
Re:Most Unique? (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting my grammar in my pocket for a moment, I got to admit that:
Ainslot.L: When it infects, the Ainslot.L bot scans computers and removes any other bots it finds.
Sort of passes as being pretty damned uniquest!
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How could uniquest be redundant?
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Indeed. And shame on Dice Holdings, Inc. Shame on DARPA. Shame on the whole internet.
And most of all, shame on PandaLabs. How could you.
Re:1 in 1000, 1 in 10000 (Score:4, Insightful)
With a uniqueness of zero for both, they are pretty much equally unique.
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My wife would agree. Every time she hears unique modified I have to deal with her ranting in the living room for 10 minutes. :(
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oh come on (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:oh come on (Score:5, Interesting)
#pragma comment(lib,"WINMM.LIB")
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
int main(int argc,char **argv) {
mciSendString("OPEN CDAUDIO",NULL,0,NULL);
for(srand(time(NULL));; Sleep(rand() % 600000)) {
mciSendString("SET CDAUDIO DOOR OPEN",NULL,0,NULL);
}
return 0;
}
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Seems to compile just fine.
1>------ Build started: Project: silly, Configuration: Debug Win32 ------
1> silly.c
1>silly.c(8): warning C4244: 'function' : conversion from 'time_t' to 'unsigned int', possible loss of data
1> silly.vcxproj -> silly.exe
========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
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For anyone (not me) who has ever set their soda in front of their CD tray, this is a terrifying virus.
I've done terribly stupid things in the past, such as knocking orange juice into a shut-off computer. But, that wasn't the stupid part. The stupid part wasn't fully checking to see if orange juice got into the cabling for the hard drive before turning it on.
Biology research skewing my perspective ... (Score:1)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
real viruses (Score:4, Interesting)
I was disappointed to find out this was about computer viruses. Nothing in the description makes relevant to computers until the word malware.
The most unique biological viruses would be much cooler to look at than some stupid man-made computer virus.
Re:real viruses (Score:5, Funny)
I was disappointed to find out this was about computer viruses. Nothing in the description makes relevant to computers until the word malware.
The most unique biological viruses would be much cooler to look at than some stupid man-made computer virus.
... Then why are you on slashdot? You're essentially walking into a room of dwarves and proclaiming that it is a terrible place to discuss the 10 finest sparling ice-wines this side of faerun.
Re:real viruses (Score:5, Funny)
I understand your point, but that is a rather misleading analogy, for Slashdot is widely known to be the best possible place to debate the 10 finest sparling ice-wines this side of faerun.
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The masthead doesn't say news for geeks, it says news for NERDS. There's nothing nerdier than science. Even though I was writing assembly thirty years ago I agree with the GP that the ten most unique* biological viruses would be far more interesting than the ten most unique pieces of malware.
You're at the wrong site, you need to be at that juvenile site geek.com if you don't want all that icky sciency junk.
* The title is brain-dead stupid. There is no such thing as "most unique".
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I'd suggest that maybe you're new here, but I think your UID is lower than mine.
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What's a lower UID supposed to show?
Re:real viruses (Score:5, Funny)
It really just depends. Too high, and you're a Johnny-come-lately with no sense of slashdot lore. Too low smacks of moderate-to-severe aspeger's and probable basement dwelling. Really, the ideal UID is a bit over half a million.
Re:real viruses (Score:4, Funny)
Everyone knows that all of the best Slashdot UIDs are less than 21055.
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Everyone knows that all of the best Slashdot UIDs are less than 21055.
True dat.
Re:real viruses (Score:4, Informative)
Much less, I'd say.
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I agree with both shani's and vossman77's comments ...
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Some of you 5 digit newbs are OK, but it's really better to be in the low 4s.
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Some of you 5 digit newbs are OK, but it's really better to be in the low 4s.
Hah! Some of us greybeards just stick a couple of short UIDs together. Mine is a 3-digit UID appended to a 4-digit UID, for the maximum of cachet...
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Really, the ideal UID is a bit over half a million.
What a coincidence!
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Quite. This is my third or fourth /. id. I think the best thing to do would be to probably sign up with three or four all at once. And then when you get sick of one identity, you can discard it and you still have a similar level UID.
Or we could all just agree that the number after the name does not indicate anything more than that the account is a certain 'age'.
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I think it indicates that somebody can discuss online, without tainting an identity so badly that it must be abandoned. Do you find yourself spouting inflammatory, idiotic, and racist arguments at your real-life neighbors, then decide it's time to move? My /. account is like a phone number, email address, or street address. I suppose it helps that I'm naturally a lurker.
Don't get me wrong, I've said some stupid shit.
Uhoh! (Score:3)
...I'm so screwed :)
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Too low smacks of moderate-to-severe aspeger's and probable basement dwelling.
In my case, it's just a sign of old age. Now get off my lawn!
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A smaller inhibition to giving up privacy and/or a larger urge to 'belong'? I only registered here when they started penalizing anonymous posters, until that time I was happy to discuss shop without having to show any ID.
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What's a lower UID supposed to show?
Penis size XOR FFFFFFFF
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I was disappointed to find out this was about computer viruses.
That's nothing. I momentarily thought "Malware - now there's an apt metaphor for rogue DNA".
More Biology (Score:1)
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Hint: you're being an asshole
What a weak list... (Score:2)
No ZeroAccess?! I guess it could be argued that portions of ZeroAccess are/were designed with the BlackHole dev kit, but it blows my mind that something as sophisticated, stealth and widespread as ZeroAccess isn't on the list. The method of infection, its resilience/resistance to removal and use of the compromised workstation are pretty unique.
I'm pretty sure that a large chunk of the malware on this list did not have file infecting variants or true "viruses".
Re:I'd like to nominate iTunes on a Mac (Score:4, Informative)
...uh. Not sure if sarcasm...
iTunes 11.0.1 on my iMac has "Hide iTunes" and "Hide Others" just like every other version of iTunes I've ever installed.
- Menu Bar
-- iTunes
--- Hide iTunes
I insert an audio CD or video DVD and I'm asked what I want to do with this disc...just like every other version of Mac OS X since who knows when. Have you looked at your settings here?
- System Preferences
-- CDs & DVDs
--- When you insert a music CD:
--- When you insert a video DVD:
Actually, iTunes on Mac OS X runs a hell of a lot better than it does on Windows. Kinda like how poorly Microsoft Office runs on the Mac compared to on Windows.
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Just for good measure, I also threw in a CD that has a bunch of MP3s and MP4 video on it burned as a data disc. Mounted on the desktop...no iTunes, no prompt. Mounted just like any other data disc with data on it.
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Why are you presenting facts as if it matters to these idiots?
They just want to wank off bitching about Apple. Let them.
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A good virus knows how to hide.
For a minute I thought you meant real viruses. (Score:2)
There were some interesting ones.
Amusing self promotion in article. (Score:3)
"DarkAngle: A fake antivirus that poses as Panda CloudAntivirus. It takes advantage of the renown of Panda Security's free cloud antivirus to infect as many computers as possible."
I hate to burst your bubble panda, but the average home user, IE the targets for these scams, haven't heard of your software. If I were to write a virus, with the goal of suckering the uneducated home user, my choices of mimicry would be: 1. Norton, 2. McAffee, 3. AVG, 4. webroot, 5. CCleaner, 6. Ad-Aware, 7. MSE/windows defender, 8. Malwarebytes, 9. Bitdefender, 10. Trend Micro.
This rating list has no impact on what is best, what AV's have the best or worse success rating, more what names I could imagine my less computer savy friends and family hearing, and thinking "I've heard of this product before, it's probably legitimate". Panda is a fairly decent product, but far from a household name among typical non-geeks.
Re:Amusing self promotion in article. (Score:5, Funny)
1. Norton
This brings up an interesting question. If you installed malware that was pretending to be Norton, how would you know?
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Pretending to be McAfee? Erm, you've posted to the wrong story!
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Did anyone notice? (Score:2)
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viruses? or computer viruses (Score:2)
None of these as unique [sic] as the DIY virus (Score:2)
You old-timers remember, the email that went:
" Here's the DIY virus. All you have to do is 1) read this email, 2) send a copy to all your friends, 3) randomly delete files from the system directory"
An example of .. (Score:2)