TDK talks TM Blog

Just an update as my next show, Show #13 ‘ ” xxxxxxxxxxx ”  is long long overdue.

My PC was hit by a Virus ( I think ) and after a week of trying to contact and get support from my ISP, along with running reptitive scans and attempts to cleanse my PC, all I succeeded in, was consuming 1 week. I say, “I think” because I was unable to remove the virus with removal software, after several scans, BUT simply deleted the identified culprit file with windows navigator. Now when I run the virus scanning software, all shows OK. Well this was too easy and I, now a skeptic at times, thought, how can I be certain? My ultimate decision was to simply REPLACE my PC, as it’s 6 years old already, being a single core CPU – quite slow – and a hard drive that is nearly full. On order and still not delivered,  this supposed “Virus” was a blessing in disguise.

During that time I spent some time peering into the world of a Virus, what they are, what they do, etc. For one thing, not many people know much about them, as a Virus is very elusive. Unlike the early days of viruses, where they were easy to spot because they completely formatted your hard drive, locked up your computer and did other very OBVIOUS actions. It became a no-brainer, that a virus has taken over.

Today, viruses are elusive, because they can simply nest themselves into your PC, morph themselves into various legit programs and sit there doing very inconspicuous actions, which one would never be able to identify. Cool ! It’s like hacking into someones’ bank account and simply withdrawing small sums of several dollars every couple of days or weeks, for months on end. Simply, one would never know.

I am told that there are businesses which sell blocks of compromised computers for the sole purpose of  co-ordinating planned and timed attacks to a target website, be it government, e-biz or whatever. These compromised PC’s can sit anywhere, such as peoples’ homes, yours and mine, run and behave normally so as not to raise any suspicion from their principle owners and users.

Now, I am far from an expert on this. Suffice to say, use ONLY legit programs and use and rely heavily on a industry recognized virus scanning software.

Oh yes, Show #13 will be out soon ………………

Stay Tuned ………..

TDKtalks