KDB Systems

These past two weeks have been crazy for malware. I’m getting several phone calls a day about rogue security programs. These programs hijack your computer. The latest version is extremely hard to remove from XP. If Windows is running it’s near impossible. The malware gets into the system files and doesn’t let other programs run. I have to remove the hard drive and scan it with another computer. Then I re-install the hard drive and run more scans. This malware is constantly changing. The anti-malware scanners are always behind. I find it’s best to wait for two or three business days after receiving an infected computer before working on it so the anti-malware scanners will hopefully have the malware in their signatures. Yesterday I received an infected computer that was running Windows 7. Windows 7 was running with the default security settings. All the user accounts had passwords. The malware was the exact same as I’d had all the trouble with on XP computers. It took about five minutes to remove it in Windows 7. Because of the better security in Windows 7 the malware could not get out of the user account that clicked on the wrong web site. I had set this computer up. When I set up a computer I always set up a second administrator account with a strong password. This is especially important in Vista and Windows 7. If you only have one account and it gets corrupted it’s very hard to fix it. I logged in with the second account, loaded the infected users registry hive, deleted a couple of entries, and deleted the files those entries pointed to. I was then able to reboot into the infected users account with no signs of the malware. I waited a couple of days then ran several different scanners just to make sure. They did find a couple of dropper files in some temp folders. If those files had inadvertently been run the computer would have been infected again. I was very impressed with how well Windows 7 protected the computer. It’s impossible to stop every social engineering attack. Some people will always click on the wrong thing. Windows 7 with the default security settings did a great job of limiting the infection and making it easy to remove.

Through the Microsoft MVP program I’ve been involved with many different product groups over the past few years. I’ve always thought that the competition for resources between product groups was sometimes counterproductive. Sometimes it gets downright ugly. As I’m just on the periphery it’s been hard to get the big picture and fully form my opinions as to exactly what’s going on. Here’s an article by a former Microsoft employee that paints the big picture quite well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html

My hope is that Microsoft will change. I’ve met some brilliant people during my visits there. Because they are stuck in a silo most of their ideas seem to fall by the wayside or when implemented get changed so much in order to get accepted by the other silos they bear little resemblence to the original idea. I think Microsoft realises this and is struggling to change. Let’s hope it happens. Despite Microsoft’s many detractors I believe they were at one time an innovative leader of the computer industry and did much more good than harm.

Update: Here’s Microsoft’s response.

http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/02/04/measuring-our-work-by-its-broad-impact.aspx

One of the most frequent questions I see on the Microsoft Answers forums is about problems with IE8 being slow, crashing, or acting erratically. It’s usually caused by a plug-in. I was going to write a tutorial about how to troubleshoot this. During my research for the article I found this blog post by Ed Bott. It covers the topic very well.

I just got back from Whistler where I picked up my Olympic volunteer accreditation and uniform. I’m jazzed about the chance to work at the Ski-jumping and Nordic Combined events. I’m working on the calculations crew. It will be a hectic, fun filled February. That’s not really what this post is about though. During the drive home, about forty-five minutes, I was reflecting on my Olympic journey and the Olympics in general. Some people in Vancouver and the Sea to Sky Corridor are negative about the Olympics. There is a fair amount of negative press. There are organised protest groups, some advocating violence. Why are some people so excited and enthusiastic while others are so against the Olympics? If we discount the violent fringe I think the majority of the people negative about the Olympics fit a very different personality profile from the excited supporters. My whole life I’ve looked for new experiences. I thrive on learning new skills and experiencing new things. I tend to get bored with something once I’ve had the experience. I go looking for something new. When I was younger I had very restless feet, always wanting to see somewhere I hadn’t been before. As soon as it was announced that Vancouver got the 2010 winter Olympics I started my Olympic journey. I volunteered for events at the Whistler Olympic Park before you could volunteer for the Olympics. I revelled in learning new skills and about a sport I knew nothing about. I was a Pre-Olympic volunteer, interviewing Olympic volunteers. I immersed myself in the Olympics and the experience of volunteering. I think many of the people who wish the Olympics would just go away are the opposite to me. They thrive on continuity and knowing what’s going to happen before it happens. I’m not saying one is better than the other. They are different outlooks on life, that’s all. I was somewhat angry when I talked to people who were going away for the Olympics, or upset because they would be inconvenienced by them. How could they even think of missing something this big right in their back yard? It’s only three weeks of inconvenience out of a lifetime. After thinking this through I’m no longer angry. How can you be angry just because someone is different from you? There are many other reasons that people may be excited or angry about the Olympics. Most of the people I’ve talked to personally however fit into one of my categories. They’re either excited and can’t wait or they just want it to be over. I think for most of us it is more about our outlook on life rather than the Olympics specifically. I’d be just as excited about a world’s fair or any other major event in my back yard. Others would be just as negative about those same events. Both viewpoints are valid. I can live with that.

Normally I save my charitable donations for local charities or some kind of medical research. The media attention to Haiti has impacted me deeply. We’ve seen media coverage of disasters before. Hurricane Katrina comes to mind. The earthquake in Haiti dwarfs what we’ve seen before. I’m sure there have been disasters as bad, but we didn’t have pictures within hours of the event live in our homes. This is what modern communications can do. We’re all jaded by biased news reporting or news as entertainment. In this case everyone covering the earthquake from Haiti seems to have lost all interest in bias and news as entertainment. They seem genuinely shocked and disturbed. Their pleas for help seem absolutely genuine. I say to the media – well done! I urge everyone to donate to the charity of their choice. I donated here Canada for Haiti.