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SPICE-E BACoN (UDTQ#111) - ARPANET Antivirus

Happy Thor’s day, folks!

The Recap:

Yesterday’s question asked what the CIA Triad is in terms of security, and over 75% of you correctly chose “Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.” This might seem like a bit of a silly concept at first, but it puts the distilled ideals IT security into 4 (relatively) simple words in a way that I personally found to be very helpful during my IT career. Specifically, keeping in mind (or reminding others of) the “Availability” aspect. If your network isn’t secure and easy to use, your users will make it insecure and easy to use.
If you’re not familiar with the term, the Washington University in St. Louis website seems to have a good breakdown on all three points, and we’ve also got a writeup right here on Spiceworks about network security that briefly covers CIA, as well.

Click to view yesterday's results

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The Ramble:

How often do you get spam calls?

I used to get at least one or two a day, but when my phone updated and gave me the option to not even ring for unknown numbers, that quickly dropped to basically none within a month, and for the past ~3-4 months I don’t think I’d had a single spam/scam call.

However, this morning I woke up to a voicemail from just after midnight saying that my “purchase of [expensive product] for $1500 was successful, and if I wish to cancel to stay on the line” It was a pretty obvious scam to me, but I kind of wish it wasn’t! That expensive item is worth significantly more than $1500 :joy:

It does really annoy me, though. Scams like that are specifically preying on folks who don’t have the means make such a purchase, which means that when this scam inevitably gets someone, that person is going to end up in an even tighter situation, and/or have to deal with at least cancelling cards/accounts before any real damage can be done.

The Real Question:

Today’s Throwback Thor’s day takes us back to 1972 and ARPANET, for a look at the beginnings of computer security.

Which of the following is credited as being first anti-virus software?
  • McAfee
  • Reaper
  • Commander
  • Bacon Bytes
  • I’m not sure, but I’m excited to learn more!
0 voters

The Rest:

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As always, if you have suggestions for future questions, improvements, or want to help out with a full question, shoot me a DM or leave a comment below!

And since you’re still reading this, don’t forget to leave me a spice-up just below this! If it’s not orange and filled-in like this → :sw_pepper: it’s not spiced up yet! It lets me know you enjoy these and gives us both points, so why not?

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If you’ve never played it or read about it, CoreWar is based on this answer and the virus it was designed to eradicate.

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My spam calls come in batches. I’ll go for weeks without any, and will then get 5-6 in a day or two. Luckily, my Pixel phone has a built-in app that has a big red banner saying “spam call” when they come in so I don’t even have to bother answering (as if I would actually answer calls from unknown numbers).

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Knock on wood I’m fortunate enough to not have to deal with spam calls. Fingers crossed that doesn’t change :slight_smile:

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I also seem to get them in batches. For a while earlier this year I was literally getting 5 or 6 voicemails a day from “So-and-so Lending” saying “we just need a few more pieces of information to process your loan”. Those seem to have stopped.

Now it’s back to 2 or 3 text messages (or Telegram messages or Signal messages) with fake interaction like “Hi John [my name is not John], can we reschedule our dinner for this Friday?” or just a simple one from someone whose profile picture is a very attractive young woman saying “Hi :heart:”. Nope, don’t know you, report and block.

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The whole “I’m not going to accept phone calls from numbers I don’t know or from numbers with CLID blocked” doesn’t work for me - a lot of work-related calls come from phone numbers I’ve never encountered before or so infrequently that I neither recognise them nor have them in my contacts. Add to that, where I work blocks their CLID.

So yeah, … unknown number? I still need to answer it. :smirk: :man_shrugging:

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Bacon Bites
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Saw Bacon Bytes and instantly thought of these
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My previous job was like this…
Thankfully, they had a phone stipend program, so I essentially had them pay for a separate phone that I could turn off when I wasn’t on-call/working :joy:

It was annoying carrying two phones, but it gave me a much better work/home separation, as I could isolate all of my MFA apps and such to the work device and really disconnect from work when I needed to. (It also meant I could have access to both robot and fruit phones for testing, which came in handy many times.)

Basically if the “work” phone rang, I answered, no matter what the number was, but if the personal phone rang, I knew it was someone I had in my contacts.

Though, there was one problem with that… one of the techs I worked with also happens to be my best friend, and rents part of my house, so if work needed to get my attention, they still had a way to! :joy:

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Thankfully, my company doesn’t provide mobile devices and all work communication on my personal cell goes through Teams, so I don’t have that issue. I truly have the liberty to ignore the unknown/blocked numbers and am grateful.

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I can’t be bothered with carrying 2 phones … did it briefly - no thanks, not again if I can avoid it. These days (and for over a decade) I have one phone with 2 SIMs in it - personal and work. If I want to, I can disable/turn off the work SIM to avoid work calls and txts (and ignoring work e-mail and Teams messages is easy).

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So work-related phone calls and txts go through Teams? Including from suppliers, vendors, contractors, etc.?

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I got one today and It infuriated me lol it was a scam spam too so v annoying to answer and has a 5 sec delay before a robot tells me my account was hacked

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Yes, as we use Teams Phone for our actual phone system as well, so absolutely nothing work-related hits my actual cell number. So much better than the days when I, too, had to carry two phones. 90% of my company has no idea what my personal cell phone number is, as there’s no need with Teams. I rarely even answer the external Teams calls unless it’s something I’m expecting or I know who it is based on the number.

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I get a lot of spam calls and a lot more are automatically blocked.
Yesterday, I received a recorded call from Microsoft, “We noticed suspicious activity on your M$ account from an IP in Russia. If this was not authorized, please press 1 and a rep will call you back.” Of course, I press 1. I like to keep spammers like this on the phone as long as I possible can because I feel like if they’re on the phone with me then they’re not screwing around with someone else that could be fooled by these wads. The call back was from “AOL Support.”. Even the spammers can’t keep their lies straight.

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I get great pleasure out of this when I get those fake “Dell tech support” calls wanting to erradicate my device of all the viruses and malware they’ve detected.

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When I receive a call from an unknown caller, if I choose to answer it, I will answer with “Who is calling?”

If there is no response within 2 seconds, I will repeat the question. If still no response, I hang up.

If they answer with anything other than their name, I repeat the question a couple more times. If they still don’t answer properly, or it’s obviously a robot, I hang up with no further words.

If they do answer, my next question is “What is the nature of this call?”

If I want to continue the conversation, only then do I identify myself. Or, if at any time I realize that it’s actually someone I know, I’ll break out of the robo-response and converse normally.

Here’s the reasoning: I never identify myself or say anything that can be interpreted as affirmative or negative until I’m satisfied that the call is legitimate. This gives them nothing with which to initiate a scam. I figure that any caller should identify themselves FIRST. It’s what I do when I’m calling someone else. (“This is Jon with Sutinen, is MaryAlice available?”)

Also, a lot of robocall systems are listening for keywords. The greeting “Who is calling?” does not trigger most automated systems to proceed, so I get a lot of silence when I answer unknown or suspicious calls.

P.S. – “Is Alonzo there?” gets an immediate hangup.

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The time they called about a problem with my “windows computer” I had a really hard time getting them to understand that I lived in an old house and the windows didn’t have a computer.

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Most spam calls don’t get through to my cell, but my home phone goes through stages where I could get at least a half dozen a day. I like to screw around with them too, especially the ones that call at dinner time. I’ll answer the phone, ask a dumb question, then just put the phone down. Every couple of minutes I’ll pick it up and say “Uh huh”, and then just put it down again. I had one guy on the phone for over 15 minutes one day. :rofl:

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I don’t even answer calls from people I know much less spam calls!
When I get a call, it goes to Vmail - the Vmail is less than 10 seconds. SPAM!

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I do not answer numbers I don’t recognize. I use a Hiya and T-Mobile Scam Block. They do a decent job of blocking/notifying scam/spam.

We use hosted VoIP that provides an app that allows me to separate personal from work calls on my cell phone.

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