Young Writers Society

Heh, I figured a lot more people would read this if I included Zombie in the title. But, I'm not being disingenuous...

A couple days ago, YWS was attacked by Zombies. By Zombies I mean computers that were hijacked by viruses and are used to harvest e-mail addresses or post spam. Fortunately, YWS has pretty good protection against such stuff. If you want to read more about zombie computers, go here:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/0 ... this-year/

So what happened a couple days ago is about 100 separate zombie computers were accessing YWS at the same time; trying to download 10 pages every second (by comparison, the average YWS user downloads one page per minute). That means there were 1,000 connections just from zombie computers every second. Since the server is only built for 50 connections per second, you can see how that could slow things down to a crawl (or just shut down the site altogether). This is why many of you were getting the phpBB: critical error message a couple days ago.

I don't know why 100 zombie computers were trying to access YWS at once; it could've been a disgruntled member or a rogue wave. I have a couple of ways to fight against it, but here is what you can do to help:

1. Run a virus scan! Your computer could be a zombie. A good free online scanner is at: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

2. Don't download ring-tones! The vast majority of ring-tones available online have viruses embedded into them.

3. Don't download anything unless you're 100% sure it's trustworthy! Every time a friend of mine has a virus on their computer, they also have a ton of spyware. The best way to avoid spyware is simply to download programs only from trustworthy sources, such as CNET's download.com or iTunes.

Lastly, if you have Windows, go here:
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/comput ... mbies.mspx

Also, keep in mind that even if a virus scan finds your computer to be 100% virus free, you may not be completely out of the woods. The best thing to do is just to do a virus scan at least once a week.

I'm going to pretend that we're dealing with real zombies, and then I'm thoroughly impressed.

But, my computer is trudging in anti-virus programs. It's great advice!

Whew...

For a moment I thought it was another fanfic.

I am very disappointed. I was about to begin my 25th zombie plan, for when they invade the internet.

The sad part might be how right you were about me reading it because I saw the word 'zombie.' xD

Buscador! wrote:The sad part might be how right you were about me reading it because I saw the word 'zombie.' xD

Ha! Same.

Ditto.

RIP Necropolis. XD

anti-pop wrote:Whew...

For a moment I thought it was another fanfic.

Same here.

I'd have to say I read it because it had the word 'Zombie' and because I thought it was another fanfict...

But that's a horrible thing! Viruses and zombies should be killed! Now, if we can just figure out which super-weapon to use...



Smiles!
@;~ Saph