The following is an epic tale of anxiety at the hands of MK, told from his point of view. Written down at about 13:30 to 14:20 on 2008/06/07
Last night, I was doing my normal thing: talking to my friends and looking up random stuff on the internet. NGG linked me to a youtube video about a game called "Sonic Nexus" [[[deja vu]]] and I looked up the article on the Sonic Retro wiki, about to tell him it's for MMF. Then, windows start changing, as if someone were clicking the taskbar.
In an IM window, chatting to a girl who was talking about her weight, the following words begin typing themselves at human pace: "your so skinnyy". It sent.
I freak the fuck out and turn off my modem. My computer had a virus. Now, next to Linux, my OS is bulletproof, as of the day before. I'm not saying its invincible, but I have good security and I don't run anything I don't know personally. So, this made me think it was a fundamental exploit somewhere.
I call JTE, on the phone, and forget how much of a child he sounds like, but he's genuinely helpful and whatnot. I have him look for any pages I visited recently with a protocol to send a message on that IM program or even a virus. No luck.
I begin retracing my steps...was it a decompiler I just ran? Was it my recently installed printer? It was connected to the phone line after all. Was it my sister? I bet it was my sister. Sadly she was not home so I couldn't ask.
I assume someone was running a remote administration tool. How else could they see what I was saying to this girl via IM? Luckily I haven't signed into anything recently so the most that could have been compromised was my IM account, as I use different passwords for everything.
I run Spybot. Nothing found. Is it a new exploit/virus made today? I sign back online, after my IP changes, and change the password for the IM program I was using, which in retrospect was a terrible move, if it had a keylogger. I sign in to nothing. I wait for the perenially useful GerbilSoft to sign on so he can send me a Linux distribution.
My mom and sister get home. I ask my sister, who is of course angry at my mom for some trivial bullshit, and she says all she ran was AIM and Firefox. She's good with the PC, but that only worries me more. My mom gets concerned that maybe something she was doing earlier, which was at a hospital website, had something to do with it. Most large institutions do use Windows and as such have horrid security, so my worries continue to mount. Was this installed all day? More accounts could be at risk.
GerbilSoft signs in, he links me to an Ubuntu download. I have no CDs so I burn it to a DVD, and also find an older version on a CD. I go to shut down, and so I check all the other IRC channels still open to see if anything else happened. I began shaking again: In a private message window with a girl, on IRC, was the word "gorgeous".
I turn off my PC, hoping whatever was wrong with it wasn't in startup. The Ubuntu CD fails. I run the DVD.
It fails. I run the integrity check, it was fine. I run the memory check, it crashes the PC. I cannot handle anymore, being extremely tired, and go to bed, around midnight.
During the course of the night, I have no less than 5 dreams where I see various means infecting the computer and compromising every account I have. I had another fucking epic dream but of course it has since faded into small meaningless bits.
Morning has come (actually about 13:30 in the afternoon next day). I've never slept that long. I go downstairs to see the keyboard was moved; my sister had seemingly used the PC, and I figure all of her accounts have surely been compromised by now.
I try Ubuntu again, and it fails. I sign in to the PC to see Gerbil again, when it says that the startup configuration has been altered. I look at SYSTEM.INI in /WINDOWS/, when I begin to shake again:
At the end of the document, it types this single word: "byee". I unplug the modem again. Had they been watching me that entire time as well? I'm surely fucked, or perhaps had they recognised the virus was about to be deleted?
With the model disconnected I ponder my next move. Suddenly, in the same window, towards the top, it begins to type: "your so skinny brit" .... "tany" *return* *return* "gorgeous<3".
Fuck ... or no fuck?
Was it a virus in my keyboard? How can they see me with no internet connection? I run upstairs and ask my sister if she had typed the word "gorgeous" at any time yesterday. Yep. "Bye"? Yep. With an extra 'e'. Oh, and she added a heart after gorgeous. The rest was also her, in fact, she had typed it while I was in the same room and she left the comment on myspace.
Then it hit me: My Sidewinder mouse.
I open an empty text file and hit one of the buttons on the left of the mouse. Turns out both of those text strings were bound to my mouse all along. I open the macro editor and it seems to have almost 10 minutes of her clicking and typing stored in one huge macro.
I sigh a sigh of relief and tell everyone else everything is fine. Fuck, am I a nerd.
