Pearl Wars etc

I updated my resume! I actually just got home from work. It’s June 16, 2005, 11:43 pm pearl time. I blog through outlook which is why of all the blog service providers that I’ve subscribed to, blogger was the only one that offered posting via email (or maybe blogger was the only one who made the feature easy to find?) As I am not always online since I don’t have the net on my fingertips, I use outlook. YES I USE WINDOWS! At least it’s a licensed version! It’s available for UP students enrolled in Com Sci so what the heck right? I’ve long wanted to migrate but the Imagine Cup project has me hooked on Windows. Personally, I’m not anti-anything. I welcome any software that works and anything that doesn’t give me a headache. Speaking of headaches, I almost had a major heart attack this afternoon. Flashback

I was booting up pearl when I noticed a strange and unfamiliar icon on my status bar, one that had no exit option on right click except stuff about 180searchblahblah (blahblahs mine). All of a sudden spy ware alerts from Microsoft AntiSpyware came popping up repeatedly and when I scanned my system I got 17 infected files! Quarantine or remove? Who the heck chooses quarantine? Perhaps those people who’d like to study these so called malware. After a thorough scan I rebooted pearl. Ahk! The weird icon was still there! So I ran msconfig and there I found several weird looking programs set to autostart. I found stuff like hkcmd.exe which, after searching, was a program bundled with intel stuff, I was kind of in a panicky mode so I wasn’t able to read well what it was supposed to do. I just read that it wasn’t a threat and moved on. Same with igfxtray.exe. There were these weird entries though, fejgl.exe and of course the 180searchblahblah.exe (blahblahs mine). So I unchecked the both of them and restarted my pc. After doing so, I ran the Microsoft AntiSpyware full scan again and it detected 2 more infected files. Removed. Reboot. No more weirdo processes running! But when I looked at my msconfig, the entries for that fejgl.exe and 180blahblah (blahblahs mine) were still there. I downloaded this tool called MSConfig Cleanup which amazingly cleans up your msconfig. I used that tool to delete the entries and poof they were gone. I took an online virus scan, TrendMicro’s House Call. It’s a java-based online virus scanner. But before TrendMicro got a chance to detect it, my local virus scanner AVG detected it. There were about 3 and one of them, I bet was the culprit for all that spy ware popping up. It was the Super Bounce Out I downloaded through limewire :p

okay.. So these are one of the things that annoy me about pirated software. You don’t really have someone’s neck available for squeezing every time your software threatens to kill your system. Them darn malware were detected before they made a drastic spread. I’ll be leaving pearl on for a thorough scan. I’m not quite comfortable yet.

I mentioned that my net access is limited, well, limited to the following:
• Dial-up at home which I rarely have access to, I live in a boarding house where lots of people share one phone line
• LAN access
o CS Department, LAN access via Jael’s utp.
o Tech Factors Office, but this is work so… :p
• Dilnet Wifi accessed from:
o Engg Library (no I don’t pay 20 bucks/hr, I make sure pearl is fully charged before going there)
o DEEE 2nd floor lobby, Indian-sitting by the wall. Wait, that was when I had classes there (but all of a sudden, without warning, IT WAS DISSOLVED, on the LAST DAY of admat period)
o Engg 2nd floor lobby, Indian-sitting against one of the big columns outside the lib (these are the times out of library hours)
• Free Public WiFi @ Robinson’s Galleria, East Wing (Figaro, Bo’s Coffee, etc.) Free WiFi! But this was during the summer when I had work there.
• Pay Public WiFi @ Seattle’s Best via Airborne access, price is steep @ 100/hr but I guess that will have to do in cases of emergencies

おやすみなさい！