Usenet binaries question

[The Seabat]

Howdy: Sorry if this is the wrong group, but I went to the helpdesk
group and downloaded the last 500 threads and found just one freakin'
post about usenet, the rest being bulls**t! So thought I'd try here.

I was perusing a couple of groups with programs to download and saw
that the majority of them were under 10MB. If you download the RAR
file it opens up to reveal an EXE file that most often trips my A-V.
What the heck are these things? Is this some kind of new usenet
downloading practice? What the hell are you supposed to do with these
little exe files? I clicked on one in an old used computer and it just
went to busy with nothing apparently happening. Can someone enlighten
me on this please? Or at least tell me where to go to get some
answers?

 

[Wolf K]

Howdy: Sorry if this is the wrong group, but I went to the helpdesk
group and downloaded the last 500 threads and found just one freakin'
post about usenet, the rest being bulls**t! So thought I'd try here.

I was perusing a couple of groups with programs to download and saw
that the majority of them were under 10MB. If you download the RAR
file it opens up to reveal an EXE file that most often trips my A-V.
What the heck are these things? Is this some kind of new usenet
downloading practice? What the hell are you supposed to do with these
little exe files? I clicked on one in an old used computer and it just
went to busy with nothing apparently happening. Can someone enlighten
me on this please? Or at least tell me where to go to get some
answers?

If the compressed file includes an *.exe that "trips my A-V", then
that's a clue that you should get rid of the whole file pronto. These
*.exe files may be designed to download and install the actual program,
but I wouldn't accept the risk signalled by the A-V program's warning.

I would avoid downloading compressed files from any Usenet group. Get
them from legit websites, if available. But be aware that bad stuff can
be hidden in many different kinds of files, so set your A-V to inspect
the files _before_ you open them. If your A-V can't do this, get one
that can.

Good luck.

 

[Rob]

Howdy: Sorry if this is the wrong group, but I went to the helpdesk
group and downloaded the last 500 threads and found just one freakin'
post about usenet, the rest being bulls**t! So thought I'd try here.

I was perusing a couple of groups with programs to download and saw
that the majority of them were under 10MB. If you download the RAR
file it opens up to reveal an EXE file that most often trips my A-V.
What the heck are these things? Is this some kind of new usenet
downloading practice? What the hell are you supposed to do with these
little exe files? I clicked on one in an old used computer and it just
went to busy with nothing apparently happening. Can someone enlighten
me on this please? Or at least tell me where to go to get some
answers?

Absolutely anything can be in a usenet binary, but these days it's
just mostly viruses, other malware and porn.
The best advice is to not download any binaries from usenet.
Just about anything you could want software-wise is available
from websites anyway.

 

[Paul]

Howdy: Sorry if this is the wrong group, but I went to the helpdesk
group and downloaded the last 500 threads and found just one freakin'
post about usenet, the rest being bulls**t! So thought I'd try here.

I was perusing a couple of groups with programs to download and saw
that the majority of them were under 10MB. If you download the RAR
file it opens up to reveal an EXE file that most often trips my A-V.
What the heck are these things? Is this some kind of new usenet
downloading practice? What the hell are you supposed to do with these
little exe files? I clicked on one in an old used computer and it just
went to busy with nothing apparently happening. Can someone enlighten
me on this please? Or at least tell me where to go to get some
answers?

Accepting an EXE from a USENET group ?

That's just asking for trouble.

I don't think it really matters what they PRETEND to be. Your
anti-virus software is telling you something.

*******

Note - even if you don't own a good AV program, you can upload
a freshly received ZIP, without opening it, to virustotal.com .
There, they have 40 AV programs installed, who will scan your
upload for viruses. If the payload is viral, you'll find out
in a minute or two. And it saves "testing" the AV resident on
the computer.

This is an example of a virus scan from virustotal.com . The person
who uploaded this, uploaded the 68 byte EICAR test file, which
is a file used to detect whether the AV programs are "awake" or not.
You can see the response, where 40 of 41 AV programs detected
the file, and the output is in red. The comment section,
includes comments and votes from people who recognize this file,
and know it's a "good" file and only for test purposes. But the
AV programs, for the most part, have done their job. For most
things you upload, there won't be comments or votes like there
were for this item. The EICAR file is famous in a way.

https://www.virustotal.com/file/275...ec2fe2a2c4538aabf651fd0f/analysis/1256933302/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file

Paul

 

[richard]

Howdy: Sorry if this is the wrong group, but I went to the helpdesk
group and downloaded the last 500 threads and found just one freakin'
post about usenet, the rest being bulls**t! So thought I'd try here.

I was perusing a couple of groups with programs to download and saw
that the majority of them were under 10MB. If you download the RAR
file it opens up to reveal an EXE file that most often trips my A-V.
What the heck are these things? Is this some kind of new usenet
downloading practice? What the hell are you supposed to do with these
little exe files? I clicked on one in an old used computer and it just
went to busy with nothing apparently happening. Can someone enlighten
me on this please? Or at least tell me where to go to get some
answers?

that's why I totally dislike "RAR" files. You never know what the real file
is.
as you av said virus, then most likely it is a virus. or perhaps some fancy
phone home dialer system.

BTW there is a newsgroup dedicated to newsreaders although it's kind of
dead now.

 

[The Seabat]

Yeah, I understand about the virus and nasty rars and such. But what
got me was that they all were like that! From different posters. I
thought it mighty be nzb files rar'd up, but no. I was just wondering
iffn there was something new going on with Usenet that I missed. The
group by the way is alt.binaries.comp. Thanks for the info guys.

 

[Evan Platt]

that's why I totally dislike "RAR" files. You never know what the real file
is.

ROTFLOL, bullis, clueless as usually.

 

[Charlie+]

On Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:14:16 -0500, The Seabat <[email protected]>
wrote as underneath my scribble :

Binary warez groups have always been like the wild west - nothing has
changed, you have to use your brain and experience to sort out the spam,
virus and malware from the very few real posts. A zip or rar file
containing a single exe file shouts "avoid like the plague" because it
probably is the plague...! Start by wiping the disk on that old
computer you loaded an unknown exe file onto!

 

[Stan Brown]

Howdy: Sorry if this is the wrong group, but I went to the helpdesk
group

"The helpdesk group"? Which group do you actually mean?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

"The helpdesk group"? Which group do you actually mean?

I see nine helpdesk groups, but NIN (which I'm using) seems to carry
only 24hoursupport.helpdesk.

Six of the groups seem to have no posts at this time; they all look like
they might be specific to some organization or other.

Two others have very few posts compared to the one above. One with all
of 17 posts is alt.24hoursupport.helpdesk, and one with a few more is
aioe.news.helpdesk.

Note: I didn't bother to refresh my newsgroup lists (four providers
total) for this.

 

[The Seabat]

I went to the only help I could find on my server which was
alt.24hoursupport.helpdesk.