Viruses

[Boaz Bezborodko]

On 9/16/2013 11:21 AM, Richard Kreiss wrote:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: filepro-list-bounces+rkreiss=verizon.net at lists.celestial.com
>> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+rkreiss=verizon.net at lists.celestial.com] On
>> Behalf Of Boaz Bezborodko
>> Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 10:40 AM
>> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>> Subject: Re: Viruses
>>
>>> Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 01:25:19 +0000
>>> From: Richard Kreiss<rkreiss at gccconsulting.net>
>>> Subject: Ot: Viruses
>>> To:"filepro-list at lists.celestial.com"
>>> 	<filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
>>> Message-ID:
>>>
>>>
>> <4766610c64024ea9842d51347409920a at BY2PR04MB013.namprd04.prod.
>> outlook.c
>>> om>
>>>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>>
>>> One of my clients early Friday morning to advise me to stay off of their
>> system.  They were being attacked by a virus that was encrypting or making
>> unreadable a large list of Office type of documents and photo formats.  They
>> eventually found the machine from which the virus infected their system.
>>> Luckily  filePro was not damaged by this attacked except for an old mdb file.
>>>
>>> They did have backups which were made to a NAS.  However even the files
>> on the NAS were attacked.
>>> The suggestion I made to him, and it is not original with me, was to backup
>> his system to the NAS and the backup the NAS to tape.  His comment to me
>> was tape is old school.  My answer was that the tape would not have been
>> attacked.  Yes, if he backed up on Friday it would have been infected files.
>> However, the backup for that day would not have been made.
>>> Just a suggestion.
>>>
>>> By the way, they are running Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, which
>> missed the particular virus attacking their system.
>>>
>>> Richard Kreiss
>>> GCC Consulting
>>>
>>> Office: 410-653-2813
>> An NAS system on the network will just look like another drive and be
>> accessible to the virus.  There are a number of ways to use an NAS device for
>> backup that would secure it from access by a virus.
>>
>> I've used one for a few years now that uses rsync to pull data off the server
>> from a separate location.  I also use a script called 'rsnapshot'
>> that creates separate directories for daily, weekly and monthly backups.
>> These directories are created using symlinks to the files so only the changed
>> files have different copies.  This makes it very space efficient.  And being drive
>> based it is very quick and easy to go get backup versions of a file.
>>
>> I believe that the commercial backup companies like Mosi and Carbonite use
>> this technology.
>
> I had created a program which would have done an hourly  copy of filepro to the NAS -
> 	1. Create a daily folder
> 	2. Create a time based sub folder
>
> This was never implemented as they went with a mirrored off-site server.
>
> They were lucky in that the virus did not attack filePro or its executables
>
> Richard.
>
A mirrored server is great for availability, but duplicates any virus 
related issues.

What's the saying?  "Availability is not backup."?