If you won't help fix it, move the fuck over.

The BBQ Pit
#1

For the last few years a number of us have been ringing the alarm bells at work over spyware (aka parasites, adware, malware etc…or if you are worried about getting sued call it “crapware”). My team are the ones who get to fix infestations all week long (rebuild roaming profiles, wipe and reimage hosed machines, etc).

It took YEARS to get any sort of response from the team responsible for preventing this kind of crap. Anything that would involve them doing any actual work was “not important”, or there’s “other projects to work on” (you get the picture). Meanwhile we’re spending at least one FTE just cleaning crap up, not to mention having to repeatedly explain to steamed staff and attorneys just why they get to waste jillions of billable hours as we run around fighting fires.

So one great big FUCK YOU to the folks who should have been fixing and blocking this stuff from Day 1. If any of you turds ever had to actually go and clean up one of these heaps of steaming poo and interact with an actual human being you’d have suddenly realized that maybe this IS A FUCKING PRIORITY.

After a while we got some tools like Adaware…which they then decided not to upgrade to the newest version so all of our threat definitions were over 6 months out of date by the time they made the new version available to us.

If we dealt with viruses the way we are dealing with spyware we’d be out of business in a week. Morons.

And finally we got the ability to start putting Firefox on machines. Great, for 99% of our users’ needs this works perfectly and it cuts way down on the problems.

Today I get told that they don’t want to support Firefox or evidently even let anyone know about upgrades to it because “Firefox has released so many patches for vulnerabilities”.

What the holy fuck? In the months since v1.0 came out they have released, by my count, a staggering three upgrades - it’s on v1.0.3 now. And the latest vulnerability was closed off within 24 hours of public notice of the problem. Aside from that we have had ZERO problems with it. Wonder how many IE patches have been released in that time?

To add to the irony, within maybe 30 minutes of that pontification the SAME GROUP of people sends out an email announcing the installation of over a half-dozen patches and hotfixes to IE to fix “Critical” and “Serious” vulnerabilities (per MS).

You guys need to walk a mile in our fucking shoes. Spend a week handling the shit we have to deal with because of your foot-dragging and refusal to recognize reality, then see how important you think this stuff is. If water is pouring down into your living room you will never fix the problem with a bucket, you have to fix the goddam leaky roof.

Grgngngrngaaaah! HULK MAD! SMASH PUNY MANAGERS! REVOKE ADMIN RIGHTS!

Thank you, I just had to get that out of my system. Time for a nice cup of tea now.

#2

I hear ya.

The opposite is just as bad, though. Every time I have to send 5 emails back and forth with a customer before we figure out that his network blocks .doc, .zip, .rar, .bin, and .wtf (and, of course, he doesn’t have the tools to send a tarball, and he can’t install them…) I curse the moron employees who kept downloading SuperInternetzSpeedyHelper or opening ILoveZombieMachines.jpg.exe.

It’s not fucking hard to keep your computer free of crapware. Just don’t be an idiot!

I’m so glad that I work at a company that gives me control over my computer and has smart network admins to keep everything running right.

#3

I have a fantasy where every single malware programmer and spammer in the world stands in a long line in front of me. One by one they approach, and I cave their faces in with an aluminum baseball bat.

#4

Funny, I have the same fantasy. Only difference is that I use a sledgehammer. Much more satisfying that way.

#5

The lightweight bat is a better LART as it’s easier for you to swing over and over again. Also less likely to get stuck in their skulls.

#6

Just realized that not everyone will know what a LART is - Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool. Also called a clue-by-four.

#7

Rebar. Swung straight down on top of the head. Everybody gets a fresh piece because the last one slices neatly through the skull and gets stuck at the top of the neck meat beneath the bisected cranium.

Yes, I’ve thought about this.

#8

naah, a Themonuclear ClueBat works best…

vaporizes the spammer, and more importantly, the EMP fries his machine and then vaporizes it, destroying his illicit e-mail address books (and his backups, if he’s stupid enough to keep on-site backups)

#9

Mine involves exposed anuses and red hot pokers.

#10

You guys are lacking in imagination. Of course, what I have fantasized about is not appropriate for even the Pit, but nobody can say that I lack imagination.

#11

Isn’t the NY Attorney General going after Intermix Media Inc (the makers of such adware favorites as KeenValue, Lop, and IncrediFind)? Oh wait! He IS! Thank you God, there is justice in this world! (bows to the power of Elliot Spitzer, the only Democrat who I’d follow to hell and back.)

Linky link

#12

Um, Valgard, it’s your job to stop this stuff? I mean… all the rest of us who actually have a REAL job to do? Like making the company money? And you’re just whining cuz you have to do the job you were hired to do… :confused:
Maybe you should just do your job… and shut up…

#13

No, he was whining because he was told to do a job and then not provided with the tools necessary to do it. Reading comprehension, give it a whirl sometime.

#14

You are too nice. Lock down their machines. Malicious .exe? No problem. They can’t run it.

Either that, or you can admire me from afar. You see, I’m a system admin.

At an ad agency.

Ad agency, see? You don’t, do you. sigh.

Macs.

why yes, I do enjoy poking beehives with sticks. Why do you ask?

#15

There’s a certain visceral simplicity to repeated blunt head trauma, but once I lay my paws on the Master List of these miscreants (a la The Witches) I’ll be sure to get in touch with you.

#16

I wonder what burnt anus smells like? :eek:

A trap door that leads directly to the chipper at the Soylent Green factory would be nice. You could setup a camera and watch as they go through. Bonus if you installed some switches like on a blender. You could slowly grind away at some, while others could get the ‘Frappe’ treatment. Hours of fun!

#17

I’m quite okay not knowing that.

#18

Ooooooh, how about :

“Red hot knives up the jacksie! Handle first so they cut their fingers pulling them out!” Nanny Ogg, Weird Sisters?

#19

It should not be my job to stop malware any more than it is my job to stop viruses (there is an entire group, the same one that I was ranting about, who is very specifically tasked with that duty). Those folks are in fact “responsible” for stopping malware, however they have exhibited an amazing amount of foot-dragging on the issue.

So my group gets stuck cleaning up after the stuff. Over and over and over again. If you are familiar with computer viruses, imagine that your company’s antivirus team had the “strategy” of having YOU clean viruses off workstations instead of blocking them at the door.

This lets us (as a company) hobble along but it’s an enormous waste of time and resources - both for tech services and for the users; that would be the users like YOU who have REAL JOBS to do…trust me when I saw that I am extremely aware of the bottom line - I do not work at an IT company, I work at a large law firm and expressed in simple terms my job (and in fact the job of every single person there who is not an attorney) is to Keep The Attorneys Billing. That’s it. And this massive inefficiency won’t let us do it. Which pisses everyone off, including my team since we have to keep reinventing the wheel every damn day.

So yeah, I not only do my job pretty damn well but I’m trying to get the people who could make everybody’s lives easier to do theirs better.

#20

Sadly many parasites don’t actually run as .EXEs so they can’t be blocked from running. Drive-by ActiveX downloads. Even in our locked-down environment those can be installed without the users even knowing it’s happening. The irony is that it requires complete administrative rights to REMOVE the stinking things.