Thursday, November 10, 2011

Malicious Malware

Anyone who has been on the internet has probably been infected. No, not you body but your computer. Malware is everywhere and it spreads faster than germs at a McDonald's play place. You could be downloading an innocent email from a friend and all of a sudden you get infected. You may not know it at first but maybe days or months later you will realize your computer is running a bit weird. Your anti-virus picks up the scent of Malware and tries to delete it but its too late. Not only have files been corrupted or stolen, the virus has learned how to defend itself from anti-virus attempts at deleting it. One that I have personally fought with was a Trojan that I received when downloading from Steam, an online video game store that allows you to download full games and save your game data at their site. The Trojan was easily detected but the anti-virus could not delete it because it was appearing as a system critical process. I found out that when I located the file manually, it had blocked the Administrator (me) from doing anything to the file but reading it. The only way to get rid of it was to change owners of the file and then delete it.

Malware has now spread from computers to your cell phones and GPS units taking all your personal data. I use GPS and an iPhone to navigate the countryside of Japan but now I am afraid that one day my gadgets will fail me when I am lost. I found that my GPS had a virus similar to the one infecting Tom Tom where when I plugged into my computer, a back door was trying to be opened by some tiny bit of code. Thankfully it wasn't too complex and was quickly deleted.

Now I am just wondering, who the hell are these jerk offs that want to steal my info or destroy my PC files. Do they not realize how many hours it takes to get all items and challenges beat on Call of Duty?! This blog will seem more like a rant rather then informational but how do these dusche bags even justify what they are doing? Have they just been bullied at school too much and are retaliating? Are they getting their influence from movies and video games? Most of these people watch the movies Hackers and want to be cool like it's 1995 again? All I want is to be able to surf the web, play online games, and use my GPS with out fear of having it get hacked and infected... what's wrong with that?

3 comments:

  1. Phishers want your money not your love. I suspect you'd not likely fall for their typical pleas for response:

    Windows Live “Re-activate your account”
    Craigslist “Free iPad”
    Facebook “Suspended Account”
    Warning: Google “De-Activation Alert!”
    “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation”
    “1 of Friends Awaiting Your Response”

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  2. I certainly feel bad for those who lived time, money or data to these various malware attacks / exploits.

    But I also have an odd fascination with the mindset that goes in to trying to develop a bit of program code to defeat all the computer security systems. It does seem almost artistic in a way - though the intent is harm, mischief an or deception.

    It sounds like you have a higher than ordinary skill set with your computer to have been able to discover and defeat these attacks. Sadly most users have no clue about what is going on with their machines and who or what has taken them over.

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  3. One more point, please remember that WB 4 and 5 are supposed to include a question about the topic for the final exam. Can you amend your post to include one, please?

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