Security's Everyman

Security's Everyman

Friday, July 06, 2007

Bye Bye Data

Wouldn't this just tick you off? You make one mistake and get a virus. That is bad enough. If you are lucky it's just a mass mailer and none of your data is at "real" risk. Maybe you get something that does a little damage to an app or some files. It could be worse. You might get infected with a bot program or a keystroke logger. Not pretty. Yet if you don't do any financial related work on your PC even that isn't so bad. What could possible be the worst thing is a virus that actually deletes files from you machine. Especially one that deletes OS files. Now you are hosed. You have to rebuild and for many that means losing data because they don't back up and don't know how to recover what may be left on the system.

Oh wait, it can get worse. Not only does the virus delete your files it tells you it's doing it and taunts you as it happens. That is one cold hearted virus writer.

3 comments:

kurt wismer said...

there's actually worse than that...

perhaps the worst payload (with respect to data) is slow data diddling where data is corrupted, but done gradually so that the corruption goes unnoticed and seeps into your backups... that way you wind up with nothing to restore from even when you were taking precautions against data loss by keeping backups...

ripper had just such a payload...

Andy, ITGuy said...

Excellent point, Kurt! What would really suck is that just before it wipes your system completely it printed out a good bye note from your PC. :)

Anonymous said...

I just love the comment "it appears to be designed to perform mindless vandalism" - ahem! what virus hasn't been designed to perform mindless vandalism??

I like your post - I'm going expound my penny worth about it on my Blog now.

Jas.

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