In a sense it is, but most hackers aren't out there to compromise a home box. I don't really wanna drop 50-100 bucks on a decent router, as I'd rather pay for an 8800GTS with that money, and I've yet to have problems in ~two years of running without a discernible firewall.

DirectX could be a problem for me, I don't use bluetooth, and don't really know what the last one's all about.

But if it does become a problem then I'll deal with it then. Til then, SP3 is coming out shortly (or is it already official? I dunno, microsoft's been really weird about their news releases on the subject. One day it's up, next day it's down, next day it's up, etc).

I download from established scene groups 99% of the time, so no anti-virus for me. Although that 1% of the time has come to haunt me occasionally

Yes they are. Botnets are composed mainly from unsecured household PCs, and botnets are immensely profitable.

Yeah but if that happens it's generally pretty noticeable, and is mostly done through fairly basic IE exploits.

But you can wear your tinfoil hat if you want, I don't blame you. There's bad **** out there. I'm just not too terribly worried and have never had any run-ins with viruses (that I didn't cause myself through stupidity).

Seeing as how popular botnets are and how massive they can be, I'd say it's hardly tinfoil.

Yoshi's right though, those machine are mostly compromised thorough IE6 or something. There's no point in trying to enslave the machine of a person who is cognisant of what's going on.

Botnet worms are also specifically designed to avoid detection.

Normally I'd be offended that someone mistakes my hat for a tinfoil one but I'm not the guy putting all of his services on the internet v:)v

It's paranoia, and a particular brand of which I've never suffered from, though it's not misplaced or irrational. I do regular virus scans, they just never come up with anything, no matter how deep I go. Same with adware (other than the odd out of place cookie). I've had plenty of luck, I'm sure, but formatting every year or so also helps.


Sure, you're right. I just honestly don't care enough anymore to argue.

I do this annually or biannually too. Coming up in a few weeks, actually.

Storm has mainly been distributed through social engineering. It has been sent out through misleading emails, it has been found in game cracks and keygens, and I believe it's even been distributed by one of those russian paid music download sites. This is where it's been found.

And someone can't be "cognisant" of what's going on because these viruses are, as I posted above, specifically designed to avoid detection. They only launch an attack when ordered, and only when the machine isn't in active use. Storm, in particular, hides itself by patching drivers (like cdrom.sys).

There's also an active and highly profitable underground dealing in the discovery and sale of software vulnerabilities, so depending on the particular skill of the virus author these attack vectors might never be discovered. Furthermore, viruses aren't getting 'less common' - viruses are getting harder to discover. Many of them modify their own code to get around antivirus products now.

Yeah no, sorry, Yoshi is wrong on this. Firewalls are not paranoia and I really doubt there are people out there with the futuristic bionic cyber-brain needed to instinctively detect a rootkit being installed.

It's still paranoia, it's just justified paranoia. I've never had a problem, as I don't download MASS EFFECT CRAKKED LOL.rar from some ****ty public pirating site. I don't go around and be retarded with my internet connection. I browse smart, and don't buy into shady deals which just don't feel...right...on the internet.

I think joncy just hasn't met his quota of "YOU'RE WRONG" this week.