Commercial code is better: Cedega VS Wine 3364

snips

On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 01:38:00 +0000, billwg

The current ladyfriend used to date the network twonk at some hospital in, IIRC, Chicago. Apparently, he's a reasonably bright boy. He heard about yet another Windows-borne exploit, decimating machines on the East coast and heading rapidly West - but, apparently, they required access over a particular port or ports (presumably using an exploit in whatever service normally runs on the port).

So bright boy ensures that all the incoming points have that port blocked, and his network managed to survive - wheras others, even in the area, didn't. According to her, at least one major hospital experienced near-total computer outages.

Now, I'll grant this is third hand - she heard from him, I heard from her. However, there's two points to consider here; first, he's not just someone hearing about it, but facing it and dealing with it, and she's, at the time, dating him, so it's not like she got it third hand. Second, he runs a Windows network, and she's a Windows user; neither, apart from the typical annoyance factor one gets when dealing with yet another gaping hole in Windows, has any particular reason to present Windows in a bad light; she's just used to it, he makes a living off it.

FWIW.

Wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing has happened. I forget which of the major exploits it was, but one of them managed to essentially take out our entire LAN, consisting of well over 1,000 workstations and scads of servers, *despite* the fact the net geeks had supposedly locked down their outward-facing servers.

What they hadn't done is defend them against attacks from the inside, nor ensure that none of the desktops were running the explotable app, or, if they were, that they were likewise protected.

Seems one of the desktops got nailed, and it, in turn, launched the attack against the rest, which merrily started attacking every other system they could find, causing a LAN-wide storm of all the affected systems attacking each other as fast as the network could handle it.

Net result? Entire LAN wiped of any usable communications.

Loads of fun.

-- MS, because work should be measured by effort, rather than result.