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Clean Machines

Week of November 15, 2005

'We don't use our computer much. It's not infected.'


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Our neighbours: we've talked to them about Windows and about surfing. Sydney's been over a few times to help out.

'What does their machine look like?' I ask Sydney.

'Oh it's all right. I don't think it's infected.'

'How could that be? Every Windows computer on the planet is infected.'

So I asked one of the sons.

'We don't use our computer much. It's not infected.'

Today all hell broke loose. When they tried to connect to the Internet their box just dived and rebooted. Rick has to come and help.

'What about Ad-Aware?' I ask Sydney.

'No, they didn't have it, but I couldn't stay connected long enough to get a download.'

I try downloading Ad-Aware and burning it to CD. The CD doesn't work too good on their box, so there's only one way to do it: use the XPT to rid the computer of enough of the bad stuff so we can connect without crashing and get Ad-Aware. This process takes over two hours. There are tonnes of junk on this 'seldom used computer'. The first E3 run found over 15,000 files.

It's truly amazing the kind of crap Microsoft are foisting on the unsuspecting public. And here I thought they were guarding their system areas. Guarding? Everybody's been in there, altered files, added new ones. What a mess - what a miserable fucking mess. People are supposed to use this shit?

And this was Windows XP SP1. So recently Microsoft had a contraption that should have been shut down by the World Health Organisation. Where's the security? Steve Ballmer, you disgusting fat pig, where is your fucking security? You should be in gaol for life. Shacked up with your buddy.

Two hours and some and I've got enough of the bad stuff out of the way. I started with Sneakers to see what was booting by itself; then I used X-perf, 007, 007+, and X-tool to give me enough info so X-file can track the bad guys down. Ordinary punters don't have tools like this because Microsoft don't give them anything to defend themselves.

I went into the Registry and basically deleted everything on automatic startup. When I figured I'd killed off enough of the bad guys and tossed them out the window and made sure they couldn't start up again, I let Sydney reboot the box and try to connect. I went outside to bark at the dogs and play with the cats. It's been quite nice weather.

Sydney got a connection and started the download. I wouldn't have done it from CNET, but she's already started by the time I got back. About 3 MB. I ran it immediately.

What's instructive here is that the family using the computer had no clue anything was wrong. In our limited experience dealing with Windows computers over the top, it sets the world record - Ad-Aware found 764 [seven hundred sixty four] malware references on the box whereof 590 [five hundred ninety] data miners and 169 [one hundred sixty nine] separate instances of malware.

Good grief.

Kazaa Trojans

Just before closing down our operations for the day, leaving E3 Nighttime to clean the rest of it up overnight, I found a great obscure directory with 1871 of the raunchiest and juiciest porn pictures and movie clips ever. You read that right: one thousand eight hundred seventy one. On a computer seldom used that's supposed to be virus-free.

I yelled out the title of one of these files. The neighbour lady said to be quiet, as her fourteen year old daughter was within earshot.

'Yes, but she's also been using this computer', I told the lady, and she got it. 'You have to be the boss of this computer', I told her. 'You don't let your kids go and download anything without your approval.'

'How about their file sharing program?' she asked. 'How about Kazaa?' I went to Google and typed in 'Kazaa trojans' and she saw Google come up with 370,000 references. 'OK?' I asked her. She nodded.

There are a lot of similarities with the case of the Lund professor. Tonnes of trash harvesting who knows what and doing who knows what with it. Child pornography none of them would have even known how to find, much less had an interest in. And so forth. Had someone busted them, they'd already be up the river now - unless of course the same kind of virus expert came in to explain to the clueless judge and jury how things like this really worked.

You can find the complete Ad-Aware scan report here.

You can find the directory contents listing for the porn media files here.

This has long since ceased to be a laughing or trivial matter: Bill Gates and Steve 'Fat Monkey on Crack' Ballmer and the rest of those pathetic dregs at Microsoft Corp need to be brought up on charges unlike any heretofore leveled against any malfeasant company anywhere at any time.

They need to be given long prison sentences. They need to be made to pay for the incredible damage they've done to this planet. The level of criminal negligence in their actions is nearly unparalleled.

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