Now I'm pissed at myself.

[pseydtonne]

For years I have only been able to check my email from non-Windows clients. I use pine or the mail app that comes with OS X. The only problem is when someone sends me something Windows-related. I had enough of this so I installed Thunderbird.

Most of the time I still check my email from a remote session (ssh) to my mail account and then run pine in there. This way I delete things before they travel the wires. Tonight I was feeling lazy so I ran Thunderbird first. Bad move.

I got hit with the Win32.Worm.Mytob.BY trojan horse (aka "Lien van de Kelder.exe"). I saw an email saying my account was terminated and had an attachment. Well, y'all know I've been cut from my email before so I didn't think twice to open the attached zip file. It even said "scanned for viruses" at the bottom of the email. I mean, I was soooooo deep in state about other geek stuff that my regular filter was too low.

So I click on the attached file. Nothing opens. Click it again. I notice the file name is highlighted but the highlighting stretches on... until there is an .scr at the end. Oh no.

Then I notice email is still coming in. Oh man. I'm screwed.

I can't run Norton (it opens, then closes). TrendMicro's online cleaner can't update. I can't even open the Task Manager, regedit, or a command prompt. In fact, I'm essentially ruined. I hadn't even finished setting up everything on this box since it's a new drive. So Ad-Aware isn't on here (even though it wouldn't necessarily help). Oy.

I'll have to take a spare drive, set it up with a bare version of Windows XP Pro, install Norton on it, leave it offline and disinfect the drives. What sheer joy. This will all have to wait until later in the week, when I have the time. Grrrrrrrr.

-back to opening my mail in a binary-incompatible OS, Dante

Comments

[fuzzplugjones.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's it, next weekend you're calling me and we're setting you up a server. I haven't gotten any spam in about a year. None. No viruses, no nothing. If your ISP isn't going to do it for you, you owe it to yourself as a geek to do it yourself.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Oops. Hope you recover all right.