[Hidden-tech] OS Security (was Re: Any experience with a Virusthat attacksdocuments?)

ussailis at shaysnet.com ussailis at shaysnet.com
Mon Jan 19 09:14:50 EST 2015


A suggestion;

A long time ago I developed a method to overcome defects in early
hardware/software that would squash a document. I'd save the document on
several different media, and with many versions changes as I would work on.

The days of the floppy disk are gone, but now one could save a doc on the
hard drive and another copy or two on removable media, say a USB stick, SD
card, or CD. And if at every session, or day, or so forth the doc version
were renamed to "doc-a," then to "doc-b," etc, only the latest version
would be lost to an attack.

I found this worked well back in the late 80s and 90s with both large docs
and large printed circuit board layouts.

For the latter, at that time it wasn't uncommon for the program to say "no
good" and place a large, diagonal, yellow error line thru a week's worth of
work. Essentially telling me the work was all for naught. No recovery was
possible.

With multiple savings & multiple media, I found only the last day or half
day's effort was gone.

Since I've just begun another lengthy text, think I'll go back to some
ancient habits.


Jim Ussailis


Original email:
-----------------
From: Levi Ramsey leviable at gmail.com
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 06:46:04 -0500
To: Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] OS Security (was Re: Any experience with a
Virusthat attacksdocuments?)





On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 8:07 PM, Gyepi SAM
<gyepi-hidden-tec at praxis-sw.com> wrote:

> Yes, part of the reason most virus writers target Windows is because it is
> ubiquitous. However, the other important reason is that Windows has a
broken
> security model and it is much easier to write virus software for it.
>
> Conversely, it is harder to write a virus for OSX or Unix and and the
payoff
> is considerably more limited (unless you target privileged processes, but
> that's a different kind of attack).

OTOH, for crypto malware, the payoff is basically the same on Unixish
OSs as it is in Windows: if the virus executes under the targeted
user's privileges, then the documents which the user is interested in
can be written to and encrypted.  Bingo, you've got a ransom.  The
threat model of crypto malware is such that it effectively defeats a
user-privilege-based security model.  That said, it may be somewhat
more difficult to propagate such malware on Unixish platforms, but to
the extent that users of such platforms believe that they're not
affected, inadvertent user propagation might be more likely.

> I may sound like a crank but this bears repeating; the simplest solution
to
> these Windows problems is to stop using Windows.
>
> Fortunately, there are alternatives. They are not perfect but they are
more secure.
>
> I gave up on Windows and switched to Linux 18+ years ago.
> Now, I also use OSX and think it is a fine alternative.

-- 
Levi Ramsey
leviable at gmail.com
lramsey at umass.edu
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