Well, Today is Conflicker day or.. Conficker day. Not sure. I think I'm covered, AVG is updated and apparently it detects all variants of the worm anyway. I've checked Google News a few times and haven't seen anything about it's activity yet, maybe I'm a bit early.
I get the feeling it's april fools. The news keeps saying experts are sure it's there and dangerous, but I haven't seen any experts interviewed, and all everyone can say is, we don't know, just update your Antivirus. Anyway, likely I'm wrong, here's my latest virus story, it might help anyone infected with VIRUT.
I HATE VIRUSES!
I was hit by Virut a few weeks back, it was horrible. The only good thing about it is that it pushed me to buy a new laptop. The virsu infected everything it could get its hands on. It spread through any executable file available : not just .exe files...everything! .jpg .bmp .dll , basically anything that opens.
To get rid of it I unplugged my modem first and switched off my wireless connection. Then I ran a spybot scan and an AVG scan at the same time. AVG could barely keep up with the rate of infection. Hundreds of files were infected and removed. Yep important windows .dll' s were removed. So eventually it was not active - not infecting. Great. Only now my windows functionality was screwed. Heaps of my programs weren't working and I couldn't use any browsers. I was still in windows however, and so could have transferred all my files onto a backup harddrive. But stupidly I thought I could just repair my windows installation by chucking an XP cd in. Not so. I screwed up windows and now my computer wasn't even booting!
I was relieved at least that bulk of my data was still safe on my internal hard drive. Years of songwriting, photos,photoshop work and more. So I thought maybe I would just buy a new laptop (on credit)and then attatch my old externals to it with a caddy (never used one before) and just transfer everything over.
Not so simple, Couldn't find a decent caddy anywhere and didn't really know if any would work. Luckily a nice guy at Harvey Norman told me about UBUNTU!
UBUNTU saves the day! For those who've never heard of it (I had, but not much) It's a linux based desktop operating system. Like a free windows. The version I downloaded fit onto a cd and booted off the cd. So I didn't need to install an operating system onto my inaccessible hard drives, I just booted ubuntu off the cd and it recognised the drives and my external hard drive.
I copied everything across to my external hard drive and that was it! I had beaten virut! Or had I?
It was still lurking in files! I stupidly didn't check the drive before opening an old copy of Diablo 2. two dll files were infected and it started all over again. Same story except that I caught it a little earlier. Thankfully I'd only had the laptop for two days now and wasn't afraid of formatting it. It's a toshiba and they have an easy way of factory resetting (can't remember it now, google helped). So factory reset and Vista reinstalled - scanned external harddrive and lost a few more files but completely wiped out virut.
Wow, long story. It was horrible and expensive. I don't know where I picked up virut but I'm watching my downloads alot closer now. Scanning everything with AVG before I open it has so far been successful.
Oh...I bought my first fossil on Sunday! it's a Knightia sp. see the extract from http://www.rocksandminerals.com/fossil/fish.htm below:
(knightia sp.) - The Knightia is an ancestor of the modern herring. It is the most common of the fish species found in the sedimentary layers (some up to 2,000 feet deep) of the Green River Formation that were deposited in the Green River Lake System of western Wyoming, eastern Utah and northwestern Colorado.
I love having it, it's from the EOCENE period, around 50 Million years ago and it only cost $30 - i can't believe the way things are valued. I spend more than that at the movies! 50 Million years old! thats amazing.
Love it.
Blog soon.
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