If you haven't know by now, my laptop was hit a malicious worm called W32 last Thursday/Friday. It all started when I was browsing the net, planning an impromptu trip to Jakarta next weekend. So while checking out the website of the shopping mall (it was all in Bahasa Indonesia, jeez) near my hotel, my Norton program started flashing warnings of trojans detected. I was silly enough to continue surfing, under the fallacy that it was still safe.
Before I knew it, my laptop came to a standstill and this screen popped up.
While the scan is being performed, the "Internet Security 2012" program reported how many hundreds of viruses had infected my files. And when I tried to open any program or file, a message would pop up saying the file/program was infected. Like, EVERY SINGLE FILE! Couldn't open Firefox/IE, my docs/spreadsheets or even any folder! Rebooting didn't help either. (Yes, I wished I was just dreaming all these up.)
This is like the ultimate nightmare of a blogshop owner, apart from late backorders, missing normal parcels or screwed-up stocks. My laptop is my rice bowl! HOW AM I GONNA WORK WITHOUT IT???
The Husband was going away for a 10-day trip and he didn't have the time to help me out or loan me his laptop. Felt like I'm forever battling such PC/laptop screwups. Happens every 2-3 years, based on past user history. I'm cursed.
When I clicked on the "Get full-time protection now!", I was prompted for my credit card details. That was when I knew it's a bogus scam! Can you imagine all the efforts those people put in to make it look like it's your PC/laptop program?? This program is so smart that it disabled my Norton security suite and cripped Navi Update. Talk about 道高一尺，魔高一丈. Damn it!!!
Used the Husband's Ipad to google for solutions and found one that provided a verification code, which bluffed the "Internet Security 2012" program that I had paid for its full protection, and my laptop was back to normal. Or so, i thought.
Things started hanging, every single file & program takes 5-15 mintues to open up while jamming up the whole laptop, printing address labels was futile because the spreadsheets just clammed up and hung. It was RED BUTTON PANIC MODE!
I had 3 programmes downloaded to clean up my laptop, including the popular free anti-virus program Avast. Either this "Internet Security 2012" is so new or the anti-malware/trojan/virus programmes out there are too retarded. None of them detected anything! Till I downloaded Norton Anti-Malware.
2 malicious objects found. Muahahaha! One's a malware while the other's a trojan. But guess what, even this new-until-cannot-new-anymore version of Norton anti-malware does not have a way to clean up the trojan! Gaah, what is this world coming to??
I'm dead serious about what I circled.
When I told the Husband what happened, he laughed at me, said Indonesia was known for having many hackers and I should have known better, given my experience. Really?? I only knew about the hotbed for terrorists. #$%&^*! Nvm, karma never forget, but still, #@%$##%!!!!
The scan is still running right now as I am blogging. Not sure how long more this is going to take. Was feeling extremely tired this week with the time of the month and coupled with this fire-fighting & getting all the parcels out + replying the emails as prompt as I can, I'm totally drained right now. Really wanted to launch, but there's no way I can edit 100+ photos without this machine messing things up.
I'm so gonna buy a Macbook for my next laptop!
Did I mention on top of this attack, I booked the wrong flight to Jakarta? Didn't dare to use my laptop, as I wasn't sure how safe it would be to key in credit card details. So I used the Ipad. Gosh, it's such a torture to use it for serious form-filling! I have NEVER made a wrong booking in my life before! S$150 more to pay!!! *sobs*
So, Murphy's Law has it, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
In Chinese, we call it 禍不單行.
In Singapore, we call it #bornsosuay.
Wait till I tell you how suay I was pre-CNY.
Never mind, 福禍相依, I'm convinced something fabulous awaits me after all this nonsense.
來吧！可口可樂一 打！
Metta,
欣雨 Xinyu
