Stop Microsoft

All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: zooloo on 21 October 2002, 21:23

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: zooloo on 21 October 2002, 21:23
More added value from MS  :mad:

"A developer of bulk-mail software has figured out how to blast computers with pop-up spam over the Internet through a messaging function on many Windows operating systems."

cnn.com  MS story (http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/10/21/pop.upspam.ap/index.html)

zooloo
Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: DJ on 21 October 2002, 22:41
quote:
In recent weeks, Internet users have reported receiving pop-up messages such as one touting university degrees without classes or books.


That happened to my roomy at school a couple of weeks ago

CLICK THIS LINK TO SEE THE IMAGE (http://php.indiana.edu/~pstalvey/dun.jpg)

[EDIT - Engineer, please link to images that are larger than 300 or 400 pixels wide, as this is mainly a text forum. I think it's a good rule to keep the huge images to threads that warn in the topic title that there are huge images in it!    (http://smile.gif)    
nothing personal, of course, thanks for your cooperation!]

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: voidmain on 21 October 2002, 22:49
If I were sending out those popups to idiots who leave their messenger service running and/or don't use a firewall to block access to such sensitive ports it would read something like this:

Tired of these annoying popups? Tired of updating Virus software? Tired of all the spying? Tired of constant crashes and BSODs?  Are you interested in freedom? Get Linux!
Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: Gooseberry Clock on 22 October 2002, 03:53
Just block ports 137-139 in your firewall.
Code: [Select]
Looks like he's running XP. Let's send him an ad of our own.

[edited to provide decent word wrap on the page]

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: Zombie9920 on 22 October 2002, 06:31
Code: [Select]
Looks like he's running XP. Let's send him an ad of our own.<hr></blockquote>

Ehh, if you are talking about Engineer...that isn't Windows XP that he is running. It is Windows ME.

[edited to provide decent word wrap on the page]

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: Zombie9920 on 22 October 2002, 06:36
Hey, RRS /Blob or some other member of the MES. Nmap me real quick and tell me how many ports I have open please. I just upgraded some of my firewall software and I wanna know how well it is working(copy and paste the results like you did a sec ago). ;P

12.109.88.42

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: Master of Reality on 22 October 2002, 07:05
nmap in progress.... but your offline right now.
]

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: The Master of Reality / Bob ]

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: DJ on 22 October 2002, 08:58
Its Windows 2000 Pro, it happened at our CNC labs at school, and he took a screeny of it and posted it on our page so he could show other people. The CNC lab people said they were aware of it and were tracking the guilty party (gainin more proof I guess  :confused:  )

DJ
Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: Zombie9920 on 22 October 2002, 21:23
quote:
Originally posted by The Master of Reality / Bob:
nmap in progress.... but your offline right now.
]

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: The Master of Reality / Bob ]




I'm back on now. The phone lines got knocked out here(I'm assuming some idiot hit a line pole). I need to get broadband. ;P
The IP is now 12.109.88.12

My machine should be staying online for the rest of the night.

 
quote:
Originally posted by Engineer:
Its Windows 2000 Pro, it happened at our CNC labs at school, and he took a screeny of it and posted it on our page so he could show other people. The CNC lab people said they were aware of it and were tracking the guilty party (gainin more proof I guess    :confused:    )

DJ



Doh, I should've known it was Win2K because of the My Network Places icon(WinME has Network Neighborhood). I didn't pay attention to that. LoL

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: voidmain on 22 October 2002, 10:06
quote:
Originally posted by Engineer:
The CNC lab people said they were aware of it and were tracking the guilty party (gainin more proof I guess


Guilty party? I would say if anyone is the guilty party it would be the admins and/or Microsoft. I can't believe anyone would allow netbois traffic in from the Internet, or *any* incoming connections for that matter. That's a *major* duh. And why Microsoft has services such as messenger running by default are beyond me...
Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: Calum on 22 October 2002, 15:50
quote:
Originally posted by Zombie9920:
Doh, I should've known it was Win2K because of the My Network Places icon(WinME has Network Neighborhood). I didn't pay attention to that. LoL


i am sure my windows ME setup has 'my network places' and not 'network neighbourhood', however i remember on several ocassions (i have had to reinstall winME MANY times)that it did indeed have network neighbourhood. I wonder what makes it decide one and not the other? to me it's just another shitty workgroups icon that i will never need, since both times i have tried to network my computer with friends' win98 machines it has always failed spectacularly.
sorry, that was off topic. I won't be able to check for sure if i have network neighbourhood' or 'my network places' until next time i need to burn a backup CD, which won't be for another 600Mb or so! and at dialup speeds i don't think that will be in the near future.

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: beltorak0 on 24 October 2002, 08:38
but if you block ports 137-139, you can't get normal windows net messages, right?  or am I clueless about this...

think about what will happen if someone opens an email that exploits this 'feature' on a LAN, but instead of "net msg 127.0.0.1 'spam spam spam'" it's "net msg 255.255.255.255 'spam spam spam'", like, say, at college.  fifty people check thier mail, get fifty spams, and fifty popups appear on all the schools computers hooked into the workgroup... possibly the entire LAN....

-t.
Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: voidmain on 24 October 2002, 08:44
That's funny. I don't know about you but the messenger service is the first thing I turn off when installing an NT based system. What an annoying service. My favorite is when you are in a corporation when messenger is turned on on all workstations and someone installs a UPS with the APC shutdown service and when they unplug the UPS a broadcast goes out and all 3000 windows machines get a popup that says power was lost and the system will be shut down in 10 minutes. This happened more than once at my last place of work. The messenger service was turned off on everything soon after.
Title: MS spam gateway
Post by: Chooco on 25 October 2002, 05:03
http://shawnserver.cjb.net/junk/messenger.html (http://shawnserver0.tripod.com/junk/messenger.html)

my computer --> manage --> services --> messenger --> disable

sure stopped that n00bie in his tracks

[ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: Chooco ]