The Storm Worm ... Again!!!

Well, the Storm worm (actually a trojan) is making its rounds again,
this time using blogs and youtube.com as a phishing front.

The victim reads a blog and sees a link to a funny YouTube video. Who
wouldn't click that, right? The link leads not to youtube, but to a
phishing site which hand-crafts a page based on the browser and
version, putting an exploit right in there with the HTML.

How to get infected in Windows:
See an interesting blog, click the link. Presto! You've got Storm!

How to get infected in Ubuntu:
Quoted from http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/evilmalware.html
1. Put the attachment into the appropriate directory eg. /usr/src

2. Type `tar xvzf evilmalware.tar.gz' to extract the source files for
this virus.

3. `cd' to the directory containing the virus's source code and type
`./configure' to configure the virus for your system. If you're
using `csh' on an old version of System V, you might need to type
`sh ./configure' instead to prevent `csh' from trying to execute
`configure' itself.

4. Type `make' to compile the package. You may need to be logged in as
root to do this.

5. Optionally, type `make check_payable' to run any self-tests that come
with the virus, and send a large donation to an unnumbered Swiss bank
account.

6. Type `make install' to install the virus and any spyware, trojans
pornography, penis enlargement adverts and DDoS attacks that
come with it.

7. You may now configure your preferred malware behaviour in
/etc/evilmalware.conf .

Sometimes ease of use is not what you want...

"Help! I can't delete files off my external hard disk!"

I got this call from my friend who's a new Ubuntu user. He didn't understand why that was. I agree that it's confusing for new users.

I haven't checked his drive yet, but since he can't delete the files even as an administrator (root via sudo), I believe that the drive he's using is formatted for Windows XP. The filesystem is called NTFS. Older windows versions used a filesystem called FAT, which is what I put on external hard disks for maximum ease of use.

NTFS has permission settings and a lot of other really good stuff that FAT (and later VFAT) didn't have. It's not well documented, so Linux support has been a long time coming for it. Linux developers have the same problem with some kinds of hardware -- when you have to reverse engineer everything, it takes a long time to get all the features.

After quite a few years with NTFS, though, Linux is pretty stable with it. It is not, however, installed by default in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty). To do that, you'll need to open the Add/Remove dialog in the Applications menu:

In the search dialog, put in ntfs, wait about five seconds for the search, and you'll see the NTFS configuration tool.


Check the box next to the program, click Apply Changes, and type in your password. After about a minute, the program will be installed and you can close the window.

Next, insert your external hard disk and open the NTFS configuration tool located in Applications -> System Tools.
Click on the check box next to Enable write support for external device and click OK.

That's it! You're done. Your external drives shouold now work with no problem.

Please feel free to write any comments or questions.