The Importance of Basic Virus Protection

I don’t know how I get roped into doing this stuff but this week I’m working on fixing a computer for a friend of the family. My co-worker fixes computers for extra money on the side, I’m always asking him how he could possibly have time for it as I’m always looking for ways to maximize my free time away from work and computers these days.

This computer I’m working on right now is the perfect example of why I don’t do this for people outside of my day job. The culprit is the famous Blaster Worm from 2003, this virus is unique because it uses a simple exploit in Windows that allows it to become attached to a service. When the computer boots into Windows the virus will launch a dialog that features a 60 second count down before the computer will restart or shut down. There are a few ways to kill the countdown but this computer is so bloated with garbage that I’m unable to access a command prompt or anything to hinder the worm from doing its job. Ironically a variant of the Blaster Worm was written by a kid from Hopkins, Minnesota. I wonder if he’s listed…

If the owner of this computer kept up with his updates and had some kind of basic virus protection this worm probably could have been stopped before it hosed everything, especially 5 years after its creation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had to go through plenty of computer nuking all-nighters from nasty virus infections and I’ve gone years without running any kind of antivirus protection but I understand the risks and I know how to back up my data. For the most part typical end users need to be running something, because this is ridiculous.