Toolkit

Story: Windows patches may become automatic

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FAO DAvid Hoare....

The information is available if you look.

your virus scanner will block the virus...eventually. The provider needs time to dissect the virus, write the update, dustribute the update, and you to download it. In the past, this model worked, but the sheer spread speed of these new variants prevents this being effective. An heuristic scanning rarely works.

Your firewall would have blocked the blaster virus....but only if it was configured correctly. A full firewall is very complex to administer fully, and even a 'user' level one is not simple. While the default may block some stuff, I can gaurantee that the virus writes know the default settings for all the scanners and firewalls, and will do their best to get round them.

So....you should be safe, from this particular virus, but long term safety will need better code to prevent exploits, possibly using the auto update, or writing the code more securely to start with.

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