Hacker Alert

[M4BHoward]

About half a year ago, I took a nasty virus hit from BZ2; required a harddrive wipe/reinstall.

Today, I was in a game lobby when THIS player claimed he had done the deed:

SeriouSam
99.90.38.209

From his manner of speech, I have reason to believe this player is also known as Sly.


Not sure what the community can do about this, but I thought I'd better sound the alert. If this jerk did what he says he did, he has a very nasty virus in his possession.

EDIT: Player in question is confirmed to be Sly.

[MrTwosheds]

Sly specialises in winding people up, I don't think he's actually the loon he comes over as...
I am not aware of any viral transmission via bz2, but there are probably thousands of places to pick up malware on the internet, be very careful what you click on. As I have discovered the "free" antivirus packages available tend to be insufficient protection these days and lack the ability to remove certain types of infection. Currently I am trying out Stopzilla, it seems to have sorted out the browser hijack problem that Avirra "free" totally failed to deal with. Be very careful when looking for new malware solutions, many sources of infection pose as antivirus software.

[Zero Angel]

Did you let him know that you got a virus? If he had a way of knowing you had a virus he may have claimed responsibility just to trick you, even if you got malware from another source (ie: like adult websites that make you download special 'codecs' to play their videos). Also you would have to let us know the events that led up to your virus infection, there are many ways for malware to get on your system, most of them involve the user doing something (downloading, installing something unusual/untrusted, opening an email attachment that uses an exploit that is present in word, pdf, etc files). If any bz2 player offers you a program to cheat in multiplayer games than be cautious of it, it may be a trap, and if you try to download such programs than you deserve whatever kind of malware you get.

[M4BHoward]

Did you let him know that you got a virus?

I did not... He just randomly brought it up. His message ran something like this:

"How is your computer still working? You downloaded my virus... I thought it would totally f*** up your computer"

My computer DID get completely messed up by this virus... I don't know if Sly really planted it or not, but he certainly laid claim to it.

I'm not sure exactly how virus transmission works; I was playing stock beta6 BZ2 at the time. I do not visit nasty sites, nor do I download cheatscams.

[MrTwosheds]

Generally these days they rely on getting you to download them, by pretending to be something they are not.
They are often found in torrents, accompanying the software/film/music you would really like to have but don't really want to pay for. This unfortunately gives us all a big clue as to who is really responsible for their distributing them, not teen-nerd's or criminal organisations, but the legitimate distributors of the items you don't really want to pay for but would quite like to have.

Sly say's thing like that all the time, we don't take him seriously.

[Dataanti]

Make a host name ban on him, its a lot harder to change host name then IP address (at least that's what it seems to be harder with my ISP).

Also what did you download that contained the virus, if you got it from just playing with him then I highly doubt he gave it to you and he might also just be trolling.

I also like MS Security Essentials, it hasn't failed me yet and I've had it for 4 years well technically about 1 year cause it was windows 1 plus or something like that, can't remember but then they changed and went free.

[Nielk1]

Highly improbable.

That's about all.

Main ways to avoid viruses are to use a browser other than IE and to run suspicious programs fin VMs or SandBoxes (like sandboxee) first.

[Feared_1]

I don't think it was Sly.

He found out about it somehow and brought it up to make you panic.

It worked.

[M4BHoward]

if you got it from just playing with him then I highly doubt he gave it to you and he might also just be trolling.

Granted... But I didn't download anything suspicious. My only downloads were things like Epic Mod and G66...

He found out about it somehow and brought it up to make you panic.

Panic, no. Get rather angry, yes.

I apologize for taking people at their word. Maybe I should just assume everyone is kidding all the time and reduce language to a bunch of laughs... [add sarcasm here.]

Whatever the case, I choose to take people seriously. If someone tells me something, and insists on its veracity, I'm going to take their claim seriously.

[General BlackDragon]

Okay.

I stole Chuck Norris's horse and rode it into the sunset wearing white leatherskin pants, a pink cowboy hat, and smoking a joint rolled with brittany spear's hair.

[Nielk1]

rolled with brittany spear's hair.

That alone could probably cause an OD.

[VSMIT]

brittany spear's hair.

What hair?

[M4BHoward]

Lol XD

That is truly funny. Virus threats aren't.

[General BlackDragon]

I wanna make a virus that turns all poodle's hair neon green.

[M4BHoward]

Update: Now Cloaket is claiming responsibility for the virus... Specifically stated that it is transferable via BZ2.

Regardless of whether it was Sly or Cloaket or something else, it really helps no one to go around spamming virus claims.

1. If you didn't really plant a virus, and you say you did, you are a jerk for fomenting distrust among BZers.

2. If you really did plant a virus, you are a jerk for doing so.

In conclusion: don't plant viruses, and be sincere.