Sasser and Comet

Published on 18 May 2004 in , , , ,

How depressing. I connect the Windows XP laptop to the internet for the first time in 6 months and bamm. Sasser virus. The word ‘bastards’ springs to mind.

And why, oh why did I leave my lovely Linux and connect the Laptop to the internet? Well that’s a good one. Because I was trying to buy a fridge freezer. And Comet’s website is fine in Mozilla – works lovely. You can place an order, view things, compare things, enter shed loads of details and then, then, then you get to the last screen, enter your credit card details and hit that one button that completes your order.

And it does nothing. Because the JavaScript is broken. It is physically impossible to complete that transaction on Mozilla on Linux. So I retreated to Windows. And managed to get infected in about two minutes of being connected.

That’ll serve me right for not keeping the virus software up to date and not updating the Windows software….

Trouble is, as I use Linux everyday and rarely use Windows on the internet, I tend not to notice what’s going on in the Windows virus world, and forget just how much danger there is out there. Well until days like today happen.

Using a computer should not be like this… Of course… if Comet actually made a website that works, none of this would ever have happened…