Breach Aborted

Scenario: Mysterious shutdowns, restarts, automatic connections to the interweb, and during the first time, a lot of information sent out in a short period of time. In the two days following, I monitored the frequency of restarts and determined that I may or may not have acquired a virus.

Last Night's Remedy: I checked with Microsoft and recently they said that there is an opening for computers to take control. I downloaded all the security updates and went to sleep. My hope was that the computer wouldn't mysteriously restart again. It did.

Today's Remedy: I realized that XP has a firewall. I turned it on for the first time since I've owned the computer. However, my sources told me that it doesn't limit information that gets sent out. They also said that there is a security hole in port 135 (which is conventionally used for pop-ups) that can be exploited. Click here to see if your port 135 is protected..mine wasn't. To remedy this, I downloaded Zone Alarm. Zone alarm is a firewall program that can limit information sent from my computer, plus it prevents any outside sources from accessing my computer. In the three hours since installation earlier tonight, 77 intruders have been blocked by Zone Alarm. I know I am on high protection, so that number could be inflated...then again, the high number could mean that I was just used as a porn server. One can only hope. Anyway, I finally got around to renewing my Anti-Virus Subscription. If I spent the mere $15 bucks anytime between December 4th, 2002 and last week, I could have avoided the two days of exposure. Anyway, I ran the updated virus scans and discovered that my computer was infected with the W32.Spybot.Worm. This 'worm can perform different backdoor-type functions by connecting to a configurable IRC server and joining a specific channel to listen for instructions.' Basically, it opens up my shit for hacking. After dilligently following the security response, I'm scanning the computer again for any more infections. Let's hope I'm rid of this.

Forecast: It took me two days to figure this mess out, and I tried to leave my computer offline only today. Unfortunately, the automatic restarts lead to automatic login's. This same thing happened to 10% of the computers at UC Berekely...Hopefully, valuable information was not taken. I give myself about 6-8 weeks of intense monitoring over what may or may not have been taken from me, if anything. Luckily I don't have too much money and I try to clean out my .dat files once in a while. I'm only angry that I wasn't protected from this type of stuff earlier.

Well, the scan is done, and I am clean...at least I have one less thing to worry about before I run off to vacation. Special thanks to Soup, Tim, and to a smaller extent, Millah for their advice.

. . [~] . 0 (Grumble) Grumbles .