Viewing Thread:
"Viruses on PC's but what if.................."

i was wondering after loads of people trying to con me into trojan viruses on my PC as well as the countless worm viuses how long it will be till we get a console virus.


There has been a huge increase in viruses in the home as more and more home users go online. These viruses can be anywhere from a web site to a friendly looking e-mail.

In the past few months i finaly got round to installing and anti-virus program and was surprised to see i had to trojans and following a scan found they were hidden in a zip file.

Since then i've had loads of e-mails from people as i have a web site so get sent a lot of stuff and most of it is trojans.

now there are ways to spot them like if the file extension ends in .exe and there are some real classics like the "i love you virus" i got sent it's file name was. "i love you.doc.exe" hehe nice desguise.

anyway i recomend installing an anti-virus program now as you'll be surprised what you can pick up without noticing.

I know most of you don't bother as it slows the system down a bit but on newer systems it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Anyway i was thinking about all these consoles that have so called "online capeability's". And while it's hard for something like the dreamcast to get a virus due to it having no where to store itself apart from the VM. More and More consoles are going to have hard disk's.

I see the x-box being an easy target with it's built in Hard disk and i think it also has a windows based OS (operating system) making it a bit easier. But what about PS2 when the Hard disk comes out for it plus the internet connection (of course).

Now all these consoles talk about internet access and how there going to be broadband campatible but none have mentioned any sort of anti-virus protechtion. And it's most likly they won't think about it till something does come along.

Maybe when the internet access does come along on more consoles hopefuly someone would of thought about anti-virus protection.

It's a shame with have programers in this world that have nothing better to do than ruin a machine to make it as usless as a solar powered torch.

Anyway remember to always use protection when on the web :)

good man always use protection.

I myself have got norton anti-virus and i'm running another called AVG i'm also on a proxy so it's hard to get in through a proxy (i didn't always have a proxy hence the previous trojans)

And to make sure it's even more protected i wrapped a massive condom over the lot.

Ha get through that

I'm not trying to challenge anyone but:

It would be nearly impossible for anyone to hack, or send a virus to my computer. I have two firewalls (one on my server, and one on my PC) so if someone hacks into the first one, they will only get onto a rubbish computer running linux, and a program called smoothwall as my server. They would then have to hack from there to my main computer (windows), and all within 2 hours because thats when I get disconnected from BTinternet.

I also have McAffe Virus scan which is updated every couple of weeks. I have it on auto scan because I have a fast PC. I don't notice any difference and it is constantly scanning incoming files.

As for the PS2 and Xbox. I think that, like what has already been said, the only thing they could really do is wipe game saves, or send virus's to PC's. Not much to worry about really.

yeh, maybe ill get something like norton antivirus ps2 version.

I suppose it could be quite hard to write a virus for a console as they'd have to know the hardware very well.

Also they say it's impossible to write to the bios someone is bound to find a way.

I think the most like virus if there is one will be a game wiping type as this is probably the most important data to all gamers

There is no possibility of this generation of consoles running viruses themselves. Although they will be able to store them on memory cards, and hard drives, what can the virus possibly do to the console?

It can't affect the bios.

The OS is non-writable (although you make the point that the xbox has a windows OS, every console since the PSX has had an OS! It's a completely different style of OS from a PC).

Only games and discs can control the console... how would a virus make the console do something suspect?



However, viruses can be stored in files on the console's HDD, and then sent to PC users via email... which is extremely hard to prevent (after all, will any Hard drives ship with virus software- I think not!).

Sonic

Anti- Virus software only slows down your machine if you have auto proctect on. I have Norton 2002 and turn off all the auto protect and email scanning. I do a check when I want to do a check, this doesnt slow my machine down. Also iam careful and would never open a file I didnt know who it was from. If iam unsure about files download from the net I can check them.

The DC has spread the first console virus ever. It is kind of miss leading as the game in question was PC compatable. Once played on a PC the game ran a virus which wiped Hard Disks. The games hasnt been released over here as I think is one of those weird Japanese games.

I think that now the introduction of hard disks and the internet, into consoles could create more chances for viruses to occur. But games are stored discs so the most likey event would be viruses that wiped saved game data from the hard disk or memory card. Maybe some evil person would create one to try to alter the BIOS or what ever on the PS2. But I would think only harmless viruses would be the main problem where they just wipe the data.

But I would be sure that Sony or any other company would try to prevent things like this from happening.

i was wondering after loads of people trying to con me into trojan viruses on my PC as well as the countless worm viuses how long it will be till we get a console virus.


There has been a huge increase in viruses in the home as more and more home users go online. These viruses can be anywhere from a web site to a friendly looking e-mail.

In the past few months i finaly got round to installing and anti-virus program and was surprised to see i had to trojans and following a scan found they were hidden in a zip file.

Since then i've had loads of e-mails from people as i have a web site so get sent a lot of stuff and most of it is trojans.

now there are ways to spot them like if the file extension ends in .exe and there are some real classics like the "i love you virus" i got sent it's file name was. "i love you.doc.exe" hehe nice desguise.

anyway i recomend installing an anti-virus program now as you'll be surprised what you can pick up without noticing.

I know most of you don't bother as it slows the system down a bit but on newer systems it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Anyway i was thinking about all these consoles that have so called "online capeability's". And while it's hard for something like the dreamcast to get a virus due to it having no where to store itself apart from the VM. More and More consoles are going to have hard disk's.

I see the x-box being an easy target with it's built in Hard disk and i think it also has a windows based OS (operating system) making it a bit easier. But what about PS2 when the Hard disk comes out for it plus the internet connection (of course).

Now all these consoles talk about internet access and how there going to be broadband campatible but none have mentioned any sort of anti-virus protechtion. And it's most likly they won't think about it till something does come along.

Maybe when the internet access does come along on more consoles hopefuly someone would of thought about anti-virus protection.

It's a shame with have programers in this world that have nothing better to do than ruin a machine to make it as usless as a solar powered torch.

Anyway remember to always use protection when on the web :)