Useless Conversation

[Lantyssa]

We might be related then, my mom's side has a crapload of 1600s New Englanders that she traced back recently. Not as Irish as she thought.

We can compare notes... if I ever find where I put the charts.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Feel bad for the husband.  Friend of his was driving in from Iowa this morning so the two of them could then head down to Indy for the Nationwide and Nascar races this weekend.  Before leaving Chicagoland, they were supposed to meet up with a third friend for lunch.  Now, it's 4 hours from Cedar Rapids to our place and four hours from our place to where they are staying in Indiana, and expected time of arrival in Indiana was ~6pm ET.  Iowa friend sent a text about 8:30am-ish saying he was on the road already (which is a freaking miracle, tbh) and yet he doesn't arrive at our place until almost 1:45.     The friend they were supposed to meet for lunch had a tight schedule because he's working a partial day prior to leaving on a plane this evening for his vacation.  Iowa friend knew this.  And still just expected the three of them could figure out lunch somehow. 

Seriously, this guy's attitude at being on time is just annoying.  He doesn't give a damn about anyone else's plans or what's going on.  He was a bit put out when he asked about lunch and the husband said he was going to just pick up a sandwich at the store across the street.  Oh, and they needed to stop at a Chase before going out of town so he could close his account, since it had to be done in person and there apparently aren't any Chase branches in Cedar Rapids.

As for geneology - all I know is the family is German, my paternal great-grandfather (I think) was the one who came over and started a bakery in my hometown and it had been in the family for over 100 years when my grandfather closed the bakery in 1977.  For whatever reason, we've never talked about that sort of thing that I can ever recall, which makes it sad to think about the family history that's been lost now.

[taolurker]

I hate it when people are perpetually late. It's like some people don't know how time works or something. I have one friend who constantly tells me a time, but never shows up until at least a half hour afterward. I've taken to giving him times already adjusted to his clock.

Genealogy can be interesting but frustrating too.  I've had both of my parents bloodlines traced back to the 1800s (and further) by other relatives. What I learned from that is that you should never assume that the history is lost, because I was amazed at the stuff my Aunt discovered about our German relatives. It might've been easier however because both of my bloodlines came to the US through Ellis Island in the 1930s.

[Strazos]

Native American - Canadian - French Canadian - English - Irish - Scottish - Welsh - French - German - Lithuanian - Greek - Jewish - Russian. That just mom's side, which she traced back to the 11th century somehow.

Dad's side is just Irish and Filipino-Spanish - boring.

[ghost]

My mom's side is pure German.  Dad's side is supposedly from Scotland at some point.  I don't think they even know, really.  My wife's father's family is from Germany originally and her mother is Native American/English. 

Our kids look like little Aryan wonders.   

[Morat20]

My Mom's side is pure German -- she was born there, came over at 6 or 7. Dad's family is German by way of Ohio (much further back, of course). My last name is quite German, if a bit obscure. Lord knows no one ever says it right. They keep adding "r" to it. It has no "r" in it, but people think it needs two or three when they say it.

Dad's grandmother was from China. He didn't know. Seriously, it was hilarious. His sister says something about it, and Dad says "Wait, what? No she wasn't".

My Aunt's trying to convince him, pointing out a few things, and Dad's very adamant that he'd have noticed if his grandmother came from China. You know, accent or looking Chinese or something.

My Aunt finally sighs and says "Honey, what was her maiden name?".

Dad says "Ling." pauses "That doesn't prove anything."

Best birthday party EVER. It was Dad's 65th. In Dad's defense, she died when he was 8 or 9, and had been in America for like 40 or 50 years at that point.

[ghost]

I really, really, really wish that my youngest child would learn to sleep for more than 2 hours at a time.   

[Xanthippe]

I really, really, really wish that my youngest child would learn to sleep for more than 2 hours at a time.   

My sympathies. I had one of those. I can't even be encouraging and say, it won't last long because it fucking lasted forever.

[ghost]

That doesn't bother me so much.  The fact that we have a new non-sleeper arriving in October does.  

Addendum-  and speaking of non-sleeping, we fed the oldest boy a sliver of scallop tonight and he threw up everything he even looked at today, food wise.  Poor little guy.

[JWIV]

That doesn't bother me so much.  The fact that we have a new non-sleeper arriving in October does.  

Addendum-  and speaking of non-sleeping, we fed the oldest boy a sliver of scallop tonight and he threw up everything he even looked at today, food wise.  Poor little guy.

My second is semi-decent at sleeping through the night now, but it took the better part of 18 months to get there.  But I do have a friend who's daughter took the better part of 3 years, so yah. . .   

[Morat20]

Oh hey, guess who saw a UAC popup and thought "I don't remember installing anything, but I'm sure this is legit!" and hit okay? My wife. Whose laptop has now surpassed all previous infections (which I didn't think was possible) into some god-awful nightmare land.

The lovely little fucker (some sirefef variant, coupled with god knows what else) has one:

1) Either screwed up or bypassed my Windows Activation key, so booting into any mode other than "safe mode" asks me for my Windows Key. I'm not giving it, not until this sucker is gone.
2) Created a lovely "Windows has encountered a critical problem and will reboot in one minute" issue that appears to be triggered by, well, everything. Including half of safe-mode, and very CERTAINLY any attempts to run MSE.
3) Fake Blue Screens of Death. Took me three routes through it to realize they were, in fact, fake.
4) I'm pretty sure some low-level DNS rerouting shit that's running all TCP/IP traffic through god knows where, since that's about all that would explain some of the awesome behavior attempting to surf the net (to get to, among other things. Microsoft Security Essentials).
5) Totally and massively fucked up the firewall, to the point where not only is it OFF, it won't actually display the screen to turn it ON.

I've had to resort to professional help and actually pester one of the malware forums, because this is well beyond my skill level -- and I need it cleaned up enough to copy .doc files and such to DVD.

From what I've read, it's basically a rootkit issue, just not one that any standard program manages to catch and kill all of.

[ezrast]

Are you sure you can't just pry the hard drive out of the thing and hook it up to another (preferably non-Windows, just in case) machine?

[Merusk]

Sounds like your only recourse is to wipe the drive and take away your wife's admin account privs.   Had to do that to mine.. she's now a standard user who can't install or run anything that wants to access more than the hard drive.

Oh, and yeah, what ezrast said to recover files. Just don't tell her you did it. They're gone forever.

[Morat20]

Are you sure you can't just pry the hard drive out of the thing and hook it up to another (preferably non-Windows, just in case) machine?

That's my last ditch, "oh fuck" maneuver. I've got another laptop drive and an external enclosure. I can swap in the other drive, format it and install Windows from the recovery disk, then move the files from the tainted drive, then nuke the drive from orbit. this particular virus -- and it's associated ilk -- don't live in word docs and the like.

This virus seems simple enough to kill once the required files and random names and keys are located, which I'm getting help in. It's not any different than any other trojan, it's just nastier in that it seems designed to disable access to your computer rather than steal data, passwords, or con you into buying stuff.

It's more a "fuck you" variant than anything else, which is...well, pissing me off.

[taolurker]

See if you can run msconfig and stop things from loading at boot up to possibly stop it enough to allow removal. What specifically did it do to safe mode, because that would be where I would try a virus/malware scan first. If it booted into safe mode, I'd run Combofix and the HitmanPro. Also try running Rkill and trying to run those in a normal boot. I helped a friend with something similar and found articles on Bleeping computer about it. ****Warning, the variant of this malware I removed changed many files/shortcuts to error or appear deleted but it had actually changed everything to hidden.***

Obligatory Links to Bleeping Computer:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix#use
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-windows-security-renewal <<====***Variant mine was

[Morat20]

Just got done running rkill (had to get Combofix working) and running Combofix. Having a malware expert analyze the logs. I'm 99% certain I've got it all, but with my luck there's still a lurker ready to reinstall everything, so I'm holding off.

As it is, it somehow fucked up my Windows Validation. It's STILL fucked up. Thank god it's just the laptop.

[Viin]

I had a virus pop up recently too, messed with windows security (couldnt start the security scan as the services were disabled, etc). I installed Avast and ran a boot-time scan and it was able to remove it all. Took a few tries to get it running, as windows kept shutting down with that same 'encountered critical error, will restart in 1 minute' error.

Also, I basically replaced My Documents with my Dropbox folder and all the "docs" I have are always backed up to Dropbox. That way even having to use a restore point from several months ago just messes up my programs (and any saved games!).

[Yegolev]

Found some virus on my wife's laptop and I installed Ubuntu on it.

[Miasma]

Found some virus on my wife's laptop and I installed Ubuntu on it.

Greater virus kills lesser virus nice.

[Morat20]

Judging by the malware forums, this sirefef variant is a fucking bitch and a half, and often coupled with ZeroAccess and a few other varients just for shits and giggles.

I've STILL got part of the ZeroAccess one on there -- I think it's just a remnant and not anything to worry about, but I'm gonna make sure it's clean and let the wifey play on the net for a bit, then re-run everything and it's dog before I clear her for typing in a single password anywhere.


Edited to add: Best of all? Vista is no longer registered. I'm gonna have to fix it over the phone, apparently. It won't take the license key, because the license is already in use. By the laptop. That's claiming it's license is no longer good. Stupid circular POS.

[taolurker]

Not gonna advocate piracy or anything, but you can find a workaround for that. <Redacted> (link available via pm if you want it.)

[Morat20]

Not gonna advocate piracy or anything, but you can find a workaround for that. <Redacted> (link available via pm if you want it.)

It's supposedly just a phone call and hassling until you get Live Support. The thing's old, but it wasn't bought resale -- bought direct from Dell and I still have the original disks and the key's on the machine itself. (On the bottom. Which is SO GREAT for typing the thing in.).

Looks like the infection is gone, which leaves me:

1) Reauthorizing Windows.
2) Figuring out what service or dll got shit-canned somewhere that prevents me from turning on Windows Firewall.
3) FIguring out a way to backup some of her more critical documents that doesn't expose me to her three or four times a year outbreaks of binary space herpes.

Still no passwords on the thing until the whole security suite is back up, and it's gone a week+ of heavy internet use without triggering a damn thing. Then another full set of scans. And then MAYBE I'll let her log into stuff that's acceptable to being hacked. I might still nuke the thing from orbit, but at this point I feel safe moving off critical files to another machine.

[Reg]

Three or four times a year this happens? You seriously need to take away all of her privileges and give her a dumb user account to use.

[Morat20]

Three or four times a year this happens? You seriously need to take away all of her privileges and give her a dumb user account to use.

No kidding. She's getting better -- this is only the second one this year, and the first I hold her pretty much blameless for.

The thing that gets me? She doesn't actually visit dodgy sites -- doesn't pirate, doesn't torrent, doesn't make a habit of clicking on executables randomly. Hell, she doesn't even look at that much porn and when she does it seems to be pretty mainstream places, not the seedy cracks of the internet where the naked people are viral vectors.

I'm thinking of forcing her to switch to another browser, see if that cuts down on the entry routes. Maybe Chrome or Safari.

I think part of the issue is she'll leave her laptop off for weeks at a time, and patches and updates are slow to get applied. She might miss a month of MSE updates and scheduled scans that way. Heck, there's a Java update sitting there on her laptop I'm afraid to install because of the recent attack. (probably just delete java and reinstall direct...)

[Sky]

I've got the old lady using Firefox with noscript on her laptop, but she still doesn't get how to allow a couple domains. If the obvious one or two don't work, she won't use scientific method to unlock content, she opens access for everything on the page. Other than that, she's decent at being aware of what she's doing.

Of course, she bought the laptop because she was tired of my bitching about security when she was using her account on my pc.

[Lantyssa]

I'm thinking of forcing her to switch to another browser, see if that cuts down on the entry routes. Maybe Chrome or Safari.

Network storage, automated backup, automated updates, firefox with adblock plus, and just nuke her laptop from orbit every time she gets a virus.

This happens far to often to her and you spend far too much time trying to recover.  Ease your pain by doing it this way.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, get an image of her fully installed machine and just wipe it each time.  Will take 10 mins.

Acronis is good for that.

[Hammond]

I have seen a few of those ZeroAccess viruses out there.  They all came from either a Flash vulnerability or a Java vulnerability.  Switching her to Firefox or Chrome may cut down on some of the issues by themselves but it will not resolve all of them.  Like Lantyssa said install addblock plus with firefox and possibly noscript.  Noscript can be a bitch about not allowing certain websites to work properly and you have to white list them so it can be a fairly manual job at first.

I usually just re-install the computer its faster and typically the machine is going to run better anyway.  Getting a good image of the machine fully patched should cut down on some heartache.

[Morat20]

It's too old for that -- looks like it came in via Java. A reminder that I need to nuke her Java install and reinstall. Assuming she needs it. I don't think she needs it. :)

Hopefully moving to most of her surfing via the iPad will keep some of the issues out. Her laptop is likely to be relegated to writing.

I view these things as very frustrating learning experiences. :)

[Strazos]

Hell, she doesn't even look at that much porn and when she does it seems to be pretty mainstream places, not the seedy cracks of the internet where the naked people are viral vectors.

Surely there's a joke to be found in there, but I'm not really the type. 

[Morat20]

Hell, she doesn't even look at that much porn and when she does it seems to be pretty mainstream places, not the seedy cracks of the internet where the naked people are viral vectors.

Surely there's a joke to be found in there, but I'm not really the type. 

I worked hard to put it there. Nobody bit. Apparently you guys aren't that low-brow.

[Soln]

We were being polite.

[Minvaren]

...anyone else have family members that only send out email updates when someone dies?   

[Nebu]

...anyone else have family members that only send out email updates when someone dies?   

No... but my brother has a 22 year old daughter and I've only seen her twice.  Does that count?

[Polysorbate80]

My niece is 25 or 26 and I've never met her in person.

My cousin's child is only 20-ish, but that's counterbalanced by the fact I can't even be bothered to remember if she has a son or a daughter.

You're doing ok