Wednesday, June 16: Tune It Or Die!
GOING VIRAL
by Rob Lopresti
I am afraid I am not my usual charming self today. More in a mood to cuss and kick the furniture. I was almost not able to provide a column this week. It looked for a while like James might have had to fill the space with a Mannix rerun or something.
You see, my main computer has been in the hospital for two days, having its discs scoured clean. It caught a virus on Wednesday night. I still don’t know where it came from but it strolled past my ESET brand anti-virus software like it was carrying an engraved invitation.
And. alas, I hadn’t run a backup in a while. So none of my current half-finished blog entries were available, even if I had been in a mood to slap them onto the netbook. But clearly our intrepid computer guru was able to beat the nasty little bug to death and put in a new anti-virus program he thinks will be a bit more awake.
News flash…
So before I resume my epic pout let me tell you about a news story one of the IT guys at work pointed out to us. This was back in March but I saved it, never guessing how much I would need it.
PC Pro reported on a company in Kiev called Innovative Marketing Ukraine. Sounds like a nice place to work. Hundreds of techies, mostly college students, pumping out computer code. There was a human resources department, a call center, good salaries, holiday parties and even paintball competitions.
You’ve probably seen the punchline coming by now. Those hardworking geeks were creating viruses for a living. Like the one that caught me, their products were not just intended to be mean, the goal was to make money. From the article:
The company built its wealth pioneering scareware—programs that pretend to scan a computer for viruses, and then tells the user that their machine is infected. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over their credit card information, paying $50 to $80 to “clean” their PC.
That’s approximately what appeared on my machine. Would you believe these Ukrainians earned—if I may use that word in this context—approximately $180 million in 2008?
They are closed down now but of course there are many rivals in this thriving sector of the business economy, all eager to ruin your week for a few bucks. So back up early and often and change your anti-viral software occasionally.
I’m going to go grumble some more. I wonder what Mannix would have done?
LOL, sorry to hear that, Rob!
By the way, is that a picture of a real virus? What does it do exactly? Looks freakin’ awesome, anyway (though I wouldn’t want to catch it)!
As usual, James came up with the great illustration. It is a virus, but I don’t know which one.
The illustration is an electron microscope image of a T4 bacteriophage virus. It only attacks bacteria and is harmless to humans.
But it sure looks like a nano-mosquito to me.
“It only attacks bacteria and is harmless to humans.”
Ahhh, so it’s one of the good guys! As always, appearances are deceptive.
The pic looks like something Dr. Seuss would’ve drawn to illustrate something by Lovecraft! Rob, I actually caught one of those viruses by clicking on one of those fake warning thingies! As for what Would Mannix Do? Simple: He’d have Peggy take care of it–problem solved!