Way to keep the Evil Empire Alive

The BBQ Pit
1

So I’ve been using Ubuntu for a while, I really, really liked it. Had a bit of a tussle with the fonts and shockwave content and well, I didn’t like the email program I tried, but overall, I was tickled pink to be free from the Evil Empire of Microsoft.

I was using Open Office, yahoo messenger, firefox browser, life was good. Heck, I even started to play different solitaire versions and even some mah-johng.

I have to say, it was pretty easy switch, once I got my own kinks worked out, nothing real major.

Until 2 days ago, when I started having problems. Can’t get to google. Can’t get to my bank…everything is just being squirrely.

My machine was hacked. No, I don’t know how, I don’t know why. Evidently, they didn’t change any of my passwords or drain my bank account, so I don’t know what they were up to. (Yes, I’ve changed everything) However, I did format my hard drive today and reinstalled windows since I didn’t really have the know how to figure out what sort of root kit they may have installed on my machine. So here I am, back in Windows. Bill Gates little bitch. Although I have Open Office still and insist on Firefox, the OS is all his.

So fuck you you cocksucking, lowlife, pondscum drinking douche bag. Fuck you. You are probably yet another little fucking script kiddie that I have been dealing with since my first modem, who doesn’t have the god damned sense to learn to do something right. If you want to be a hacker, at least be a good one you stupid fuck. Clicking a fucking button doesn’t make you l33t.

Now, I will take some responsibility here because I ventured into the world of Ubuntu without knowing every little thing about it, updated it regularly and thought gee, it’s my little contribution to a little bit better planet.

Yes my system was fully updated at the time we found the hack, however, I work mainly on the weekend so I may have had a day or two without doing the updates.

God damn it. Hack for world peace, hack because your fucking kid is hungry and you need the money. Having to spend 5 hours fixing my shit for you to do NOTHING is a ridiculous way to spend a day. Especially a day when I am already worried about losing my house AND my car. Especially when I am waiting to see who is going to knock on my door today and want money.

I gotta worry about you, you little, incompetent, script monkey. I hope when Bill Gates has us all by the short and curlies, your short and curly is first against the wall.

Go graffiti your own home. Smash your own head against the wall. You certainly aren’t using it for anything.

And yes, I’d almost rather them drain my bank account, so we could track the fuckers and I’d have a better reason for being broke than my husband keeps making bad decisions.

The good news is, Eudora still is the best email program ever.

2

Ouch. that smarts…
For future reference, perhaps…
Tools for Detecting Rootkits in UNIX/Linux

Good luck, I’m not much of a fan of MS myself…

3

Uhhh…

Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you don’t know how they did it, or what they did, how do you know you were hacked?

4

Oh, wah, wah, wah, Windows is teh eeeeevil, Bill Gates is the Antichrist, wah, wah, wah. Grow the fuck up. Use the OS you choose to use for what you want to use your computer for and let others do the same. Microsoft is not evil, it’s simply a corporation that markets a very popular product. Bill Gates is not the Antichrist, he’s a successful businessman who does more good in that world that you could dream of doing in a dozen lifetimes. If you don’t want to use their products, then don’t, but drop the whole martyr bit.

5

Anybody else hear the voice of “PC” from the Apple ads?

6

How do you know you were hacked, as opposed to just stuff getting hosed and corrupted? Also, if you dislike Windows so much, why didn’t you reinstall Ubuntu or some other Linux?

7

For what it’s worth, I’m running Ubuntu, too, and I love it. I think I would have spent months and months trying to fix the problem with Linux before going back to Windows. Because I prefer Ubuntu, and now that I’ve been running it for quite some time, Windows is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I’m sorry about your luck. Have you been to the support forums?

Usually very helpful… though sometimes hard to keep your thread on the main page for long. Good luck. :slight_smile:

8

I gotta know too, how do you know you were hacked?

Atleast you were able to install Windows and start using your PC again. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

9

The evil empire thing was a bit of a joke. For whatever MS does, they have made it possible for many, many people to become familiar with the internet. The joke was because many people view unix/linux systems to be THE alternative to MS which they perceive to be the evil empire and I was merely saying that by people hacking my OS that they are actively discouraging people from trying alternatives. Trying to keep it “l33t” I suppose.

My system had gone un-updated for two days, I had been rigorous in applying the patches, which is common with open source software. I began having odd problems, I was crashing pretty routinely on things that had not crashed before. I kept applying patches. Then I was having nonsensical connection issues, not being able to get to google, even though I was able to get to its subsites. Just odd things going on. Some programs not working, etc. Well, while I was at work, my husband decided to figure out what was wrong and when doing an NSlookup to make sure it wasn’t a wonky DNS issue, instead of the info, it responded back “Hackey Hack!” and wouldn’t allow the resolution.

We are on an internal network that does house a ton of information (ok, thousands of baby pictures of my daughter) and rather than risk the idea of them having a root kit, keylogger, whatever, we secured my box in the only 100% sure way you can. We took it off the network. None of my online accounts had been compromised which tells me that it was just someone having a sporting good time, nor had I seen any unusual traffic on our network, which tells me they weren’t using me to attack others, run games or share files. I’ve been on the internet for about 15 years and ran an ISP, an IRC server, a BBS, been an ARK on an MMORPG, etc. I am well versed in useless skript kiddies. (Root, Administrator, IRCop, Sysop & ARK) been fighting prepubescent button pushers a long time.

As I said, rather than spending days trying to figure out what was going on, I just defaulted back to windows.

I will probably go back to Ubuntu soon. I really enjoyed it. It was a rather quick decision on my part to use it at all and I feel with a little more knowledge and planning, I could use it pretty seamlessly. Although MasterCook isn’t yet available for it and a few other things that won’t/don’t cross over will necessitate me having a dual boot system.

Thanks for the links guys. I was/am rather disappointed that I am not still using it.

10

Only if you’re rebuilding your apps from the absolute latest source every day, or if you’ve for some reason got a yen to try the latest nightly builds. Only update my Dapper laptop when I hear about a serious security issue in Firefox - the only application I run that’s a likely attack vector - and/or ssh - the only service I run that’s net-accessible.

You really don’t need to bother with anything other than network clients or servers for a workstation.

Lemme guess… you’re running Ubuntu Edgy or Feisty, right? Edgy is a development release, and I’m pretty sure Feisty is still in alpha. Neither are intended to provide stable desktop systems - shit’s gonna break, and probably break often.

If you want a (relatively) stable installation, go with Dapper. It’ll be supported for at least another two years. Or wait for Feisty’s actual relase, for another three years of support.

Installing development releases is just asking to break shit, especially if you update every day. Canonical developed an entirely new init system for Edgy. I’m not letting anywhere near any of my important machines until I’m absolutely satisfied that it’s as stable as init is.

I still don’t buy it. Unless you’re pointing to DNS servers that are absolutely not the ones that you configured during installation, it’s hightly unlikely that you got hacked.

Ditto.

It is possible that you got pwned, just not very probable. My money’s on packaging screwups in Edgy or Feisty cocking up your system.

11

Count me in as asking this question, too. Ubuntu is pretty secure by default; the root “superuser” account is locked out and a member of the “wheel” group (as the first and primary user, that would be you) can only execute system-level commands at the command line interface or from a GUI app by supplying your password, which pretty much precludes any system level tampering without your knowledge. (It will not, however, preclude some malicious virus from hijacking or destroying your own files, or filling up the /var directory, et cetera.) There may be exploits that are currently unknown, but I’d more likely suspect that you have some piece of hardware–likely the network adapter–for which the standard drivers aren’t fully supported.

This driver incompatiblity can be a kind of creeping problem; I’ve seen printer drivers work fine for a while, then suddenly start to squirrel out, then completely die. I’m morally certain that if someone had the knowledge and tenacity to dig into the driver and figure out everything it is doing (and a complete knowledge of the peripheral hardware and firmware) that you’d figure out where the mismatch is occuring and why it acts flakey, but–and this is especially true with Linux, where very few vendors actually support either Linux drivers or the developers who write them–for the most part that’s an exercise in futiilty.

Apple gets around this not by any inherent superiority of OS X (although it is superior in other ways) but because they have a very restricted list of supported hardware for which they tightly control the interface specifications. Hence, you plug it in and “it just works!” ( :rolleyes: just like Legos all fit together.) As an analogy, OS X is a flashlight are designed to work with 4-C or (maybe) D cell batteries, whereas Windows and Linux are designed to use anything from 20 AAA cells to 2 D cells, and tenatively support 9 volt PP3, or any odd combination of proprietary or unusual storage cells.

“But–and I am only saying that because I care–there’s a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.”

Stranger

12

Can you explain a little bit more on how your husband discovered a root kit using nslookup? What did he find that made him say “this system has been compromised”.

From what I can tell one problem was not being able to resolve a handful of domain names. Do you mind if I ask you some general troubleshooting questions?

What was the cause of not being able to resolve these names?

Was your computer’s hosts file altered to redirect these domain names elsewhere?

Was iptables altered to open odd ports on your system (or disabled all together)?

You also say you are on a home network. Is this a standard home broadband router type network?

Are you forwarding any/all ports on the router (or are any ports wide open)?

Does your linux computer get assigned a DHCP IP address from the router or does it have a public IP address?

Did you run netstat to check the computers network status? What did it see?

Did anyone look at any log files? Did you save any log files?

You also say some programs were not working. Which programs? In what way were you having a problem?

The patches you were adding, were these general patches to the system?

Were you updating software because of bug/feature fixes or just updates for security fixes - or both?

Did you apply updates to software that worked correctly before the update and the update did not contain any security fixes?

Do you commonly apply updates to software that is working fine?

I suspect you rebooted the computer a few times. What, if any, services failed on boot?

13

Excellent analogy. I’d add that with linux, you (or some random guy you know) are expected to make the batteries yourself, from water, salt, aluminium foil, and pennies.

14

*“And this one time, this guy compiled a version of Linux that ran on his wristwatch.”*

Stranger

15

I use both Windows and Mac OSX every day, and Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris on and off. I’ve also used a couple of dozen other operating systems. I’m neither a Windows-hater nor a Windows-lover, although I do prefer Mac OS for most operations. That said, I just can’t let a couple of these comments slide without response:

I think you’re missing the reason that a lot of people resent Microsoft. Many people can’t use the OS they choose. They’re forced by the place they work to use Windows. The problem with the Gates marketing strategy is the way people are pushed into using products they don’t want. One example would be the licensing strategy that requires you to pay for Windows on new (non-Mac) personal computers, even if you don’t want it. They’ve gotten better, certainly. It’s possible to produce Web pages on FrontPage that actually work on non-MS browsers these days, and large portions of Microsoft’s Web site work just fine on browsers other than Explorer.

People who don’t like Linux or Mac have an easy solution. They just use Windows, so there’s no reason to become a militant anti-Linux or anti-Mac crusader. People who don’t like Windows, on the other hand, have it crammed down their throats constantly. There’s no escaping it, so it turns them into anti-Microsoft fanatics.

Sorry, but I have to call you on this. By personal experience:

When I bought a Compaq wireless mouse, it took an hour and a half of monkeying around and downloading up-to-date drivers before I got it working on my Windows XP system. I plugged it into a system running Mac OSX (10.4), and it “just worked.”

I had to install drivers for my WorthData barcode scanner on that same WinXP system, and when it didn’t work properly, I had to run a configuration program and then download and install fresh drivers. On Mac OSX, it “just worked.”

My wife purchased an Olympus camera that came with a software package. It took over an hour of screwing around with it before we got the software loaded and forced it to recognize the camera. Even now, it doesn’t automatically fire up when she connects the camera. Just for kicks, I plugged the camera into Mac OSX. Up popped iPhoto with a notification that there were pictures on the Olympus camera, waiting to be downloaded. Yep. It “just worked.”

That’s not always the case, of course. I never did succeed in getting my Linksys USP->WiFi unit working on my Mac Mini. But for the most part, Macs don’t just work with a small subset of equipment. Mine has worked with every printer, scanner, monitor, mouse, camera, and other peripheral I’ve connected, except for the network hardware from LinkSys.

My hardware certainly isn’t all “c-sized batteries,” yet it’s worked better (or at least equally well) on Mac than Windows in all but one case.

16

I’m not arguing with you, 'cause you’re right; anything that claims to be supported by OS X is almost guaranteed to be bulletproof to install, and somehow, OS X doesn’t end up carrying around the assload of driver support requirements that XP or other version of Windows do. I frankly find it inexplicable that XP, or even 2000 Pro, has such a difficult time coping with supporting various equipment; heck, for what it does support, FreeBSD is far more seamless in running drivers. FWIW, Apple has some very specific and inviolate parameters regarding driver compatibilty with peripherals before they’ll grant a produce their stamp of approval, plus the drivers for peripherals like mice, keyboards, and memory devices (external hard drives, cameras, et cetera) don’t really work on the system level; they’re all treated as mounted devices in the /dev directory per standard Unix conventions.

Windows, from what I can tell, allows some fairly low level access for reasons that frankly boggle my mind, but probably have something to do with the monolithic kernel architecture and lack of differentiation and seperation of system level services. Anything that attaches via a USB port and is nominally supported should “just work” without any interaction from the user other than a passive message that some new peripheral was mounted. When I mount a friggen’ USB mouse, for instance, I shouldn’t have to download any drivers for it.

However, with my analogy I’m referring more to motherboard mounted devices like network adaptors, drive controllers, and video adaptors which do require low level system control. Apple is very restrictive over which of these devices they’ll support, hence why you can’t just load OS X.5 on any Intel Core Duo-based machine you find, despite the fact that OS X should drive the processor. Windows and Linux do have to (or at least, claim to) support them all; Apple supports its own and strictly approved third-party hardware and nothing else.

Stranger

17

It annoys me intensely that a google search for “Dead Badger” is almost entirely populated by copies of an allegedly comedic article written about installing Linux on a dead badger, rather than my website. The thing was written something like four years ago, and it’s taken me that long to get back up to second spot. It’s not even fucking funny.

Okay, neither’s my website, but screw it.

18

Well, I am now running Ubuntu 6.06 for nine days. I have 2 Win-98se boxes and one HP laptop running XP home and one older “Emachine” running Ubuntu on an in-house network behind an KinkSys (BEFSR81 -8 port) intoi a Wildblue Satellite broadband. I have ZoneAlarm on all but the “E” rig. (Ubuntu) No public ports or odd email ports, ( Gmail & AOHell )

Never ever hook to a broadband without router/switch between me and the pipe even if I am just running a single computer. ( Temporay hook up at MIL’s house for laptop for when we are there is behind a spare LinkSys Bxxx41 R/S)

So far so good.

Security is good but never fool proof, especially from myself. ( biggest fool around )

I try to stay off the ‘tip of the arrow’ and never fly the “A” model of anything.

As a pilot and as a computer operator, I do not nor do I want to be a test pilot, bata tester. I do not enjoy trouble.

But I must admit, this ‘Ubuntu’ is fun to work and learn from.

YMMV

19

Could you clarify this statement? For example, I’ve never purchased a PC that had Windows preinstalled (if that’s what you’re referring to).

20

As part of its volume licensing deals with the Dells and HPs of the world, MS used to get $X/machine sold whether or not the system came with Windows pre-installed. I don’t know if they still do this on anything but notebooks.

You can now buy workstations and desktops from the big guys with no OS or even Linux pre-installed, but they’re often more expensive than the Windows option on identical hardware. There are all kinds of reasons for this - AOL, compuserve, Adobe, etc partially subsidize every Dell home system with the crapware that comes pre-installled on the Windows boxes, RedHat’s pricing - but the perception of shenanigans is still there.

Personally, I build my own desktop systems, so there’s no license fee there, but for notebooks, I have to suck it up and pay.