Gameover Zeus

kwikbreaks

joe134 wrote: »

Remember Y2K?

I do.

I made a fortune out of it working as a contractor on fixes for mainframe software in the runup to 2000.

If I and thousands of others hadn't done that work the results would have been catastrophic. Doubtless many other fixes were made for other software.

Y2K wasn't malicious software. It was laziness in coding done in the 70's and 80's. The people coding stuff then (myself included) simply didn't imagine that their code would still be running 30 years later. On the IBM mainframe it didn't help that asking the opertaing system for the date only gave a 2 digit year in the result.

John_Gray

The only point I would add to kwikbreaks excellent Y2K summary is that storage, both memory and disk, was very tight in those days on mainframes, so it was often a matter of squeezing down a date field in a record into the smallest possible number of bytes (or even bits!).

kwikbreaks

I've often seen the lack of memory arguement but to some degree it doesn't hold water - you can easily store > 8 digit numbers in a fullword (4bytes on IBM) binary. Typically a 6 digit date was held in 4byte packed decimal form - S9(7) COMP-3 in Cobol in which most programs were coded.

John_Gray

I speak from bitter experience! Our Revolving Credit records were so tight that there was a limit (coded in bits!) on the length of time for which the RC could run. Packed Decimal was considered as too verbose for that field.

Jivesinger

There's another article from the BBC here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27681236

I think the key message is that for a few people who have already been infected, now is a really good time to cleanup their PCs, but for everyone else, you won't be much worse off in 2 weeks' time than you were a month ago.

But it is perhaps an opportune time to check software is up to date, take that backup, etc. etc.

joe134

kwikbreaks wrote: »

I do.

I made a fortune out of it working as a contractor on fixes for mainframe software in the runup to 2000.

If I and thousands of others hadn't done that work the results would have been catastrophic. Doubtless many other fixes were made for other software.

Y2K wasn't malicious software. It was laziness in coding done in the 70's and 80's. The people coding stuff then (myself included) simply didn't imagine that their code would still be running 30 years later. On the IBM mainframe it didn't help that asking the opertaing system for the date only gave a 2 digit year in the result.

I know it wasn't Malware, but it put the wind up a lot of people.:eek:
Then everyone over reacted, similar to gameover.
What gets me, is it's ransom ware, but, they claim it's emptying peoples bank accounts, to do that, you have to have it and not notice it, and your money disappearing at the same time, because, it locks you out, until you pay, and they've emptied your accounts;;don't know if anyone has payed up and been unlocked.?A lot are buisiness people, and it was months ago, it, took loads of money, that's the main worry, not the locking.You can wipe pc, but if they can wipe your bank, why bother with a measly £100 ransom.?It seems to be a bit of a Hybrid;Thebanks arejumping in now, laying the blame on us, and refusing to reimburse money lost.Daily Mail today;
On here Rapport is slated , BUT, the banks will soon demand it's on, with all this hacking.and more, end of freeware, perhaps???
I wouldn't pay, nobody on here would.
( would they):)

Jivesinger

joe134 wrote: »

What gets me, is it's ransom ware, but, they claim it's emptying peoples bank accounts

joe134 wrote: »

It seems to be a bit of a Hybrid;

As I understand it, it's exactly that - Gameover monitors your bank transactions, but when the crooks think they've exhausted that route, they call on Cryptolocker ransomware to lock your PC.

From here:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/03/has-cryptolocker-been-cracked-is-gameover-over/

These two families of malware are often discussed together because Gameover, which gives its operators the power to upload new malware to already-infected computers, has been one of the ways by which CryptoLocker was distributed.

In other words, the crooks could milk you using Gameover; as soon as they thought they'd squeezed everything they could out of the Gameover part, they could "upgrade" you to CryptoLocker and sting you for a final $300.

joe134

Jivesinger wrote: »

As I understand it, it's exactly that - Gameover monitors your bank transactions, but when the crooks think they've exhausted that route, they call on Cryptolocker ransomware to lock your PC.

From here:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/03/has-cryptolocker-been-cracked-is-gameover-over/

If it's monitoring bank transactions, then it's keylogging, or it's embeded in pc, yet, A/v Mbam,etc is not detecting it??
Just read DM article, and banks are jumping on the bandwagon, to offload the onus on to us, for neglect.
It was only a matter of time.Too many now, all these Apps.
Is that Sophos Tool to be recommended?? in the linked article, and, the object is, NOT, to click on unknown links.
So what does one do to be sure your Pc isn't already infected, because, the article says, loads are part of the botnet, and don't know it?

John_Gray

joe134 wrote: »

So what does one do to be sure your Pc isn't already infected [...]?

At least one article I've seen has a long list of possible hard-disk infection scanners; FSecure, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, Microsoft, to give just a few. And it's always worth running the free version of Malwarebytes' AntiMalware.

Gratis

I think it’s extremely unlikely that Microsoft would start a rumour forecasting doom so great for all who use Windows that they’d upgrade to Macs to lessen the risk. :cool:

I also think it’s unlikely we’ll get to hear about it if Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer get Cryptolocked personally. (They’d certainly be appealing targets for such a scam.)

joe134 wrote: »

Remember Y2K?

kwikbreaks wrote: »

I do.

I made a fortune out of it working as a contractor on fixes for mainframe software in the runup to 2000.

If I and thousands of others hadn't done that work the results would have been catastrophic. Doubtless many other fixes were made for other software.

Y2K wasn't malicious software. It was laziness in coding done in the 70's and 80's. The people coding stuff then (myself included) simply didn't imagine that their code would still be running 30 years later. On the IBM mainframe it didn't help that asking the opertaing system for the date only gave a 2 digit year in the result.

John_Gray wrote: »

The only point I would add to kwikbreaks excellent Y2K summary is that storage, both memory and disk, was very tight in those days on mainframes, so it was often a matter of squeezing down a date field in a record into the smallest possible number of bytes (or even bits!).

kwikbreaks wrote: »

I've often seen the lack of memory arguement but to some degree it doesn't hold water - you can easily store > 8 digit numbers in a fullword (4bytes on IBM) binary. Typically a 6 digit date was held in 4byte packed decimal form - S9(7) COMP-3 in Cobol in which most programs were coded.

John_Gray wrote: »

I speak from bitter experience! Our Revolving Credit records were so tight that there was a limit (coded in bits!) on the length of time for which the RC could run. Packed Decimal was considered as too verbose for that field.

So much technical cleverness, so little basic common sense. :wall:

The first thing that struck me when I began to use computers in the 1980s was that if you didn't put the full year in the file title they'd sort incorrectly, come the next century.

When I pointed this out to the incredibly qualified geek who was charged with showing me how to use the thing he looked stunned. It had never occurred to him.

I. too, remember the “Y2K” or “Millennium Bug” well. Not least because Macs were immune to the problem. Apple had foreseen it; others hadn’t.

One of my all-time favourite advertisements by anyone was the one run by Apple in 1999.

In terms of timing, impact, message and sentence construction it was perfection. And what it left unsaid was masterly. Try tinkering with the wording of it; you cannot improve it. It was, and remains, a classic.


The only change that I have deemed prudent to make to my own existing system and routines is to deny the lone PC access to the rest of my network.