Monday, May 07, 2001
Thank You Oh So Much Mr. Virus Maker...
On Sunday morning, I was browsing through my company email, when I noticed a sales enquiry had come into the "news" alias. Okay, we're dealing with a fairly clueless person, so I thought I'd forward the email to the correct "sales" alias. I noticed that there was also an attachment from a subsequent message from the same person. So I clicked on it. Oh, the file is called "BILL_GATES_PIECE.JPG.pif". Wait a sec... ".pif"? Executable. Noooooooooo! Crap. Too late. I had already clicked the file. Not wanting to infect all of my friend's computer systems via email, I turned the system off as soon as I could (since the send/receive email function started chugging away as soon as I clicked the button -- and I couldn't stop the transfer otherwise). So now my main home system is infected (as it turns out) with the W95/MTX.gen virus, and I can only access my system in "Safe Mode". Joy... Have brought the system in to work, where I am hoping the Sysadmin will take pity on me and my machine. Was planning on doing some articles for The Computer Paper, as well as doing some prep for teaching my class on HTML at the University of Toronto. This idea got deep-sixed by the virus. Worst part is that I know it was my own damn fault -- I know better than to click on attachments from people I don't know. Still, some thanks has to go out to the virus writer out there: thank you oh so much, and may a new circle in Hell be created for you and people like you.
On Sunday morning, I was browsing through my company email, when I noticed a sales enquiry had come into the "news" alias. Okay, we're dealing with a fairly clueless person, so I thought I'd forward the email to the correct "sales" alias. I noticed that there was also an attachment from a subsequent message from the same person. So I clicked on it. Oh, the file is called "BILL_GATES_PIECE.JPG.pif". Wait a sec... ".pif"? Executable. Noooooooooo! Crap. Too late. I had already clicked the file. Not wanting to infect all of my friend's computer systems via email, I turned the system off as soon as I could (since the send/receive email function started chugging away as soon as I clicked the button -- and I couldn't stop the transfer otherwise). So now my main home system is infected (as it turns out) with the W95/MTX.gen virus, and I can only access my system in "Safe Mode". Joy... Have brought the system in to work, where I am hoping the Sysadmin will take pity on me and my machine. Was planning on doing some articles for The Computer Paper, as well as doing some prep for teaching my class on HTML at the University of Toronto. This idea got deep-sixed by the virus. Worst part is that I know it was my own damn fault -- I know better than to click on attachments from people I don't know. Still, some thanks has to go out to the virus writer out there: thank you oh so much, and may a new circle in Hell be created for you and people like you.
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