1775 Virusses

Actually, 8 virusses/trojans, but one of them - Netsky.Q - had infected 1767 files.

Today I spent most of the daylight hours doing a clean-up of a small network in the neighbourhood. The 4 XP machines that were being used by teenagers were almost virus-free : just a residue of some KAZAA-provided spyware in the backup files. They had freeware virus scanners on, that had been updated regularly (though not to the latest version - I fixed that too).

But the Win98 machine being used for administration ( and with a very obsolete copy of Norton Anti-Virus on it ), had 1775 files infected with various nasties. Mostly Netsky.Q, but a few other trojans, diallers, and downloaders too. That was about 5% of the total files on the disk.

The moral of the story : a Virus Scanner that is not regularly updated - at least monthly, but weekly is better - just provides you with a false sense of security. Even the very best, most costly Pro virus scanner there is, if it's not been updated for 12 months, is useless compared with a freeware one that's only a month old.

I'm recommending they buy a small network license for AVG. Cost is USD 150, and they may get a discount as they're a non-profit organisation. No names, no pack drill.

AVG is of course free for personal home use.

And I suppose this Blog has finally come-of-age. I had to remove the first bit of Robot-generated Spam in the comments of a previous post. Obviously Blogger/Blogspot isn't too choosy about who is allowed to be a 'registered user'.

I'm still getting the odd e-mail thanking me for help with SACHOST too. It's still out there. *SIGH*