Think Your Computer is Safe?

::::::::

The vulnerability of Microsoft's XP Operating System and the failure of McAfee Security Center to trap all viruses resulted in an incident that left my wife's computer so disabled that it could not be repaired, even with the help of an experienced Dell technician who worked on it for four hours.

On December 28, 2008 my wife was researching Wikipedia's site for leads to the bitter controversy between the popular mystery writer Patrica Cornwell and her detractor, Les Sachs.  One of the referenced sites (she does not recall which) installed a Trojan on her system that was recognized as such by McAfee which responded with a pop-up alert containing a message that the malware had been detected and removed.

Alas, the malicious implant had already done its dirty work.  Upon boot up the next day, Windows froze at the "Windows is starting up"- screen on her system, and we were unable to get it to load.  Baffled, we resorted to professional help.

Working in "safe mode," the technician at Dell appeared to be doing all the right things: checking the Startup files and Services and looking for suspicious entries.  Finding nothing, he attempted a "System Restore," which in the past had never failed to get us out of less serious predicaments.  However, this time System Restore was locked up.  The only remaining option was to completely replace the operating system with the computer's original, a maneuver that would also remove all of the software programs and data files.

We already had backups of our data that were two weeks old but were able to make new backups from safe mode.

Replacing the operating system from Dell's facility was straight forward, but reloading our software programs and reestablishing our network was a time-consuming, frustrating chore that we deeply resented.

We are glad not to have lost our data, but we did lose three days of planned work as well as our confidence in programs that were supposed to protect us from malicious predators who prowl the Internet and use their cunning to satisfy a perverse desire to do harm.  Microsoft and McAfee could also do better.

Endnote

For a brief description of the Cornwell-Sachs controversy, see http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/sachs_box.htm.