Re: Can dialer viruses turn on the computer?

From: Cautious Nerd (Cautious_at_Nerds.com)
Date: 03/27/05 

Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 21:05:36 -0500

Cautious Nerd wrote:

> Our home phone service provider advised a friend to always disconnect
> the phone line from the PC. The friend was apparently told that if one gets a
> dialer virus/trojan, it can act even with the computer turned off. I
> have a hard time seeing this. Is this just a case of
> "miscommunafication"?

Thank you all for your knowledge.

 * Wake-on-LAN allows a magic packet sent to the NIC to signal the computer to turn on
 * Viruses can dial out upon manual power-on (though I'm not so concerned about this,
      because that's not much different from virus dialing out before system shutdown
 * New PCs have power management that allow power up at a preset alarm time.
      No virus known to use this yet.
 * Disconnect power to ensure no virus-induced power-up. For laptops, remove battery.
 * If modem is integrated to motherboard, power spikes on phone line have triggered power-ups

Cautious Nerd

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