At first I was annoyed by the outpouring of praise; gushing, promiscuous, unseemly praise. The accolades went on and on. He changed the world; he was a revolutionary, another Edison; there will never be another like him; he was the last American original. People wept openly. You’d have thought Jesus Christ had died again. It was all faintly embarrassing.

Get a grip, people, I thought. It’s not like you weren’t warned. Once Jobs announced his resignation as Apple CEO, you knew the end had to be near. I was reminded of the mass hysteria that surrounded the death of Spanish dictator and cult figure Francisco Franco  in 1975, a phenomenon famously skewered at the time  by a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update sketch: “Francisco Franco is still dead!”

But Jobs’ death ended up having a much larger large impact on me than I would have predicted. Having been such a prominent actor on the American stage for so long, there was that illusion of familiarity for those of us in the audience, and with it a very natural human interest. I felt as though, somehow, I knew the man. But, of course I really didn’t, along with millions of others. Nevertheless, I could not help but wonder: Who was that guy?

Like most Americans of a certain age, I had been aware of Jobs since he first burst on the scene back in the mid-1970s. You couldn’t help but notice him; for a time anywhere there was a camera, it seemed, there he’d be, flashing that devilish half smile-half smirk that just made you want to slap him. Always touting the Apple brand. Part carnival huckster, part guru, part revolutionary, but always the consummate showman–whatever he was, Steve Jobs had a gift for getting your attention.

Most people associate Jobs with his later products–the MacIntosh and all the I-products. But before all that there was the Apple II, the world’s first truly personal Personal Computer, and the seed (no pun intended) of Apple’s–and Jobs’–astounding success. The Apple II was the first un-computer computer. It was cute, it was friendly, it didn’t take an engineering degree to understand and operate. Kids loved it. The Apple II was a gigantic success, made Jobs rich and famous, and created a well-funded platform from which to launch other even more successful ventures. The rest, as they say, is history.

Warts and All

We humans have a habit of ascribing admirable traits to prominent individuals we happen to admire, traits that reflect our beliefs and inclinations. We think: Steve Jobs made really cool products, therefore he must have been a really cool guy, and Apple must be a really cool place to work. But the truth is rather more complex.

Not surprisingly, Jobs was a complicated individual. Along with all the superlatives that have been applied to him, many well-deserved, are some less-than-flattering depictions. Let’s  start with the fact that Jobs was not a nice man or a kind one, at least in his working life. He was, to put it bluntly, an asshole. Flaming. If you had met him you probably would not have liked him. And he probably wouldn’t have cared for you either. Yes, he could be inspirational, and many were fiercely loyal to him. But more often he was just a jerk; rude and dismissive, profanely belittling to those who displeased him in even minor ways. His tirades are the stuff of legend. He had a gift for at finding a person’s buttons and pushing them, repeatedly, relentlessly, until he got what he wanted. And when he didn’t get what he wanted, often as not he cried like a spoiled child denied.

Jobs was not one for subtlety. He favored a black-and-white view of the world–things were either insanely great or they sucked. His absolutism fostered a rabid fanboy culture that aped Jobs every whim and prejudice. All things Apple were sublime, all else was ridiculous.

When Jobs was 23, he fathered a child out of wedlock, and then spent the next two years callously denying responsibility, even going so far as to falsely swear in an affidavit that he was infertile. The child’s mother was forced to go on public assistance for a time. Jobs tried to force Steve Wozniak–his business partner and the man who actually designed and the BUILT the Apple II–out of the company.  The exact reasons aren’t really clear, but speculation is that Jobs just didn’t like this dorky, un-handsome, un-cool guy hogging his spotlight. Although eventually they made up, Wozniak, a decent and thoughtful man, would not speak to Jobs for years.

Jobs seemed to have a pathological need to make enemies, and feuded endlessly with perceived detractors. Adopted at birth, he sought the identity of his biological parents, but then purposefully avoided meeting with his father, a man who never did him any wrong and who publicly, plaintively expressed the desire to know his son. By an odd coincidence, Jobs once met his father without realizing it, when the father owned and managed a well-known restaurant in Palo Alto.

Apple, the company Jobs built, is not the new-age, touchy-feely paradise some suppose. It is a high-tech sweatshop, a paranoid, fear-driven, stressed-out rat race of a place. It is a place where your Iphone can be seized and searched, your email may be inspected, and your home searched by private investigators if they think you have something to hide.

And then there was Jobs’ absolute fixation on control. He was your girlfriend’s control-freak mother on steroids. Squared. No detail was too small for him to obsess over, often in late night phone calls to rudely awoken subordinates. In his quest for perfect, total control, Steve Jobs built a corporate structure that can only be described as Orwellian. Information was strictly rationed, and leakers were dealt with harshly by Apple’s Worldwide Loyalty Team. If somehow you irritated or threatened Apple  you could expect a good working over from Apple’s famously ruthless legal department, who would just as soon sue you into bankruptcy as look at you.

It is the richest of ironies that the company favored by creative freethinkers and self-described rebels itself epitomizes authoritarian control. The Apple OS is a closed system, even though it is based on open-source Linux. Apple practically invented proprietary hardware and software standards. Every Iphone app must be approved by Apple, which goes to extraordinary lengths to restrict the loading of any unauthorized applications. Apple effectively censors the content of its Iphones by explicitly prohibiting any apps that deliver gay art, gay travel guides, political cartoons, sexy pictures, Congressional candidate pamphlets, political caricature, Vogue fashion spreads, and other things considered morally suspect. If you want porn, get an Android, Jobs has been quoted as saying.

And we should not overlook the factories that make those beautiful Apple products. British newspaper Daily Mail got a reporter inside one of them in 2006, and he described a nightmarish scene. Workers, many under the legal age of 16, work 15-hour shifts, sometimes 7 days a week. Pressure to produce is unending. Workers who fail to make their hefty quota are dismissed. The PA system broadcasts a nonstop mix of propaganda and exhortations to work harder. Workers live in noisy, reeking, bug-infested, prison-like dormitories. Suicides were a persistent problem until management covered the windows with mesh to keep workers from jumping to their deaths.

The Apple of today is such a stark contrast with the hard-working and driven yet collegial Apple of the pre-MacIntosh days that it begs to be asked: What in the hell happened? I suspect that if you had asked Jobs, he would have expressed regret that it turned out the way it did, but that he would also have insisted that the heavy-handed management style was necessary to ensure the company’s continued success. And sadly, it would probably be true. It is less an irony than a hard and inconvenient truth that high-order success comes at a steep cost. Warm and fuzzy is not a winning strategy in business, and nice companies, like nice guys, really do finish last.

The Tao of Steve

Steve Jobs never designed a circuit, never wrote a line of code, never built a prototype, never invented anything, never “made” anything. So what exactly did he do? Jobs has been described as a visionary. But that label doesn’t seem entirely correct. Visionaries see clearly what doesn’t yet exist, bring it to life, and in so doing push the future in an entirely new direction. Jobs didn’t quite rise to that level for a couple of reasons. First of all, the change he wrought was more evolutionary than revolutionary. Furthermore, Jobs didn’t even know what he wanted. He just knew that something better was out there waiting to be created. “I’ll know it when I see it,” he often said when asked by others to describe what he had in mind. Part of his gift was in saying no again and again until finally he could say yes.

Jobs was a connector, a locus of much creative toil, a synthesist (if that’s a word,) and an opportunist, but in a good sense. Without really knowing what he was looking for, Jobs connected ideas together until synergy happened. He had fantastic intellectual peripheral vision. He spotted useful ideas and emerging trends out there on the fringes and then put them together in novel ways. The Apple II was existing computer technology plus a friendly interface. The Macintosh was the Apple II plus Xerox’s graphical user interface.  The Imac was a Macintosh computer plus a monitor in one package. The Iphone is a Blackberry plus a library of downloadable apps and a touchscreen. Apple itself is technology plus art, staffed by people with backgrounds as deliberately diverse as you could imagine.

Not being an engineer, Jobs did not easily accept that some things couldn’t or shouldn’t be done, technically speaking, and he frequently sacrificed function to serve form. This led to a mixed legacy of technological achievement. On the one hand Apple popularized a number of standards we now take for granted, such as USB, Firewire (IEEE 1394), ethernet, and wireless, and it is arguable that without Apple these now-ubiquitous technologies might have languished for years. On the other hand, at Jobs’ insistence useful, practical, necessary features (such as cooling fans) were often arbitrarily omitted from product designs, hampering their reliability and usefulness and generating problems. Many Apple products are also well-known (at least by people in my business) for their pointlessly excessive internal complexity and difficulty of repair. Making Apple products difficult to work on was part of the Apple creed. Jobs was quoted as saying that he didn’t want users to be able to have have access to the innards of their Apple products because “people just (mess) things up.”

Jobs was a gifted industrial designer who fully understood a simple but powerful concept: People adore elegant simplicity. Clean lines, pleasing curves, simple but attractive color palettes became Apple’s hallmark. Even the marketing  campaigns were marvels of clever minimalism. Think of the iconic Ipod television ads: Monochrome  silhouettes (of clearly young and attractive people) cavorting, twirling, shimmying gracefully across a solid white background as an infectiously catchy tune plays, culminating in the final frames with a simple punchline “Ipod.” Exactly four design elements, yet so dead solid perfect that it takes your breath away. Life is good. Ipod is cool. Buy one and you can be cool too.

Jobs understood the awesome power of “cool,” and knew how to harness that power to drive sales. He forever linked “cool” with the Apple brand. He knew that people would gladly pay, dearly, for that which they judged to be cool. Jobs also understood that for a product to be seen as cool it had to be seen as different, in a positive way. The Apple II was made of plastic, not metal. It had a cute little rainbow logo on it. It had a color display. You operated it using menus, not commands. The original MacIntosh, released in 1984, was radically different than the PCs it competed against in almost every way, starting with its appearance. The whole thing was not much bigger than a coffemaker. The screen, a tiny 9-inch black and white CRT, was built in. There was no hard drive. It had only a paltry 128K of RAM. There were only two programs written for it. It cost nearly $2500, the equivalent of about $5000 in 2011 dollars. The Mac was so far removed from the established standard, so expensive, so radically different, that it had to be, one would think, a pretty hard sell. And sure enough it was; even with Jobs as pitchman the Macs didn’t exactly fly off the shelves. Though a technical success, the MacIntosh was a commercial failure.

In the face of disappointing sales, Jobs forced a showdown with the Apple Board of Directors over the future leadership of the company. He lost, and was essentially fired by Apple. Jobs would spend 12 years in the wilderness before returning to Apple in 1997, this time to engineer a spectacular turnaround for the moribund company he co-founded.

Jobs “thought different” because he understood that “different” gets you noticed. Consider again the Ipod ads with their gracefully cavorting silhouettes. A less creative person might have envisioned the same basic approach, but used unretouched footage instead, with the young and pretty actors visible in all their glory. Nice, but not all that memorable if you really think about it. Somehow, the simple act of rendering the actors as silhouettes focused our attention on the product, not the actors, and gave the spot a brilliant extra dimension, took it to the next level, made it memorable, made it cool.  It was very Jobsian.

Jobs hungered for greatness, and he understood from early on that one sure pathway to it was through achieving excellence. But he knew that good enough doesn’t lead to excellence and that pretty damned good doesn’t either. Only excellence–unambiguous, uncompromising, absolute–begets excellence. By all accounts, Jobs never wavered from that standard, a testament to his epic will and determination.

Like most of us, Jobs matured as he grew older. Age improved him. The feisty brashness of his youth fell away; his demeanor improved; he embraced family life; he made up with people he had alienated over the years; the consistency of his judgement improved. He was less capricious. The Boy Wonder seemed to be morphing gradually into something like a Wise Elder. In a now-famous commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 he urged his audience to “stay hungry, stay foolish.” Yet he himself seemed to be  edging towards something resembling conventionality. He probably would never have become what might be called a normal guy, but it would have been interesting to see how he turned out had he lived a normal lifespan.

But it wasn’t enough for this fellow to simply call our attention to the issue. He insulted our work, our skills, our website, even our blog. His message was profane and gratuitously, spectacularly rude. It was also anonymous: As his email address, he left “eatme@myballs.com.” Classy.

I was bothered by this for three reasons. One, I was annoyed that we had caused a problem. Two, I was perturbed that the customer did not come back to us so that we could fix the problem. Three, the absolutely sneering, hateful, rudeness of the (anonymous!) message left me quite literally fighting mad.

However, what Concerned Citizen may not have realized is that each incoming message logs the originating IP address. I could use that information, plus other clues the messenger left, to track him down. Which I did, in probably less than two hours. I sent my suspect a note and, sure enough, his response bore the same IP address as the original message. Bingo. I wrote him back informing him that I did not appreciate his anonymous, hateful jab. His response was . . .  not gracious, and things quickly went south. I began to wonder if maybe this fellow had a screw loose, or worse, might be capable of doing something rash.

Concerned Citizen turned out to be a guy working out of his south Austin duplex (ironically, maybe four blocks from my house) under at least 4 different internet aliases.  This guy, I’ll call him “Lawrence,” specialized in Macs and did mostly onsite work. His message had so reeked of immaturity that I figured he was some maladjusted kid, probably not even 20 years old. Well I was wrong. Following the various links, I found that “Lawrence” was actually pretty close to my age (I was born in 1958), had a sideline as a musician, and had worked for the same company as I, years before. I found that we also had some people in common, so I called one of them to get a more complete picture of the guy. Turns out that Lawrence had quite a reputation. According to my source, a well-known local musician, hardly anyone wants to play gigs with Lawrence any more because he is so consistently abrasive and difficult.

I actually remembered Lawrence from our time together at the same company. He had worked in IT. I recalled that he seemed like kind of a serious guy,  gruff but capable, but actually very likable once you got to know him. I understood suddenly that things must have taken rather a sour turn for him, and felt a pang of sadness at the realization. So instead of telling him off, I sent a rather conciliatory note that concluded by saying that I hoped things got better for him.

This was kind of a special case, but there remains a larger point. Too often, people view their competitors as enemies. This is misguided, because our competitors have as much right to a share of the business as we do. There is such a thing as professional courtesy among competitors. If Lawrence had simply told me what happened as a kind of heads up, I would have said Oops, thank you very much. And–guess what–I would have owed him a favor. I could have bought some parts from him, sent him some business, helped him out on occasion. We could have begun a mutually beneficial collaboration. He wins, we win. Alas, because of the choices Lawrence made, it was not to be.

Even so, I have to say that if Lawrence were to apologize and mean it, I would forget that the whole thing ever happened. Something tells me that’s not going to happen though.

First, the good example. I recently had to order a recovery CD for a customer’s Lenovo laptop. I went to the Lenovo website and easily located a number for customer service. Called the number and with two keystrokes was talking with a live, native English-speaking representative. I explained what I needed, they forwarded me once to another rep who gathered some information, then forwarded me one more time, where I confirmed the information and gave a credit card number. They explained that the disk would arrive within 3 business days. The cost was, I thought, quite reasonable. Total time to complete: maybe 12 minutes. This was at about 3 in the afternoon. The next morning when I arrived at work at about 9:45, the CD had already been delivered! I was most impressed. Now contrast that optimal experience with the following.

A customer’s computer had become sluggish and unresponsive when surfing the internet. Eventually the internet quit working altogether. I determined that the problem lay with a program called Puresight, installed originally by a Time Warner tech as part of their free  security package.  Puresight is one of those net nanny-type programs designed to keep kids safe from internet bullies. It monitors internet connections and shuts out any potentially offensive content. Problem was, the software was filtering so well that nothing at all was getting through.

Dubious value of the software aside, in this case it should not have been installed at all because the customer was a single woman of grandmotherly age. Installing Puresight for her was totally inappropriate.

Obviously, the software needed to be removed. Problem was, removal required a special password, and that password had been supplied by the TW tech, who didn’t bother to inform the customer. Normally this is not a problem either, as you can simply remove the executables manually. But the makers of the software had gotten a little carried away with the security with this program. Long story short, there was no easy way, and maybe not even a difficult one, to remove the Puresight software without knowing that password.

Apparently, Time Warner had subcontracted their security-software development to Computer Associates, who in turn subbed the development of Puresight to an Israeli company. Calls for support to Time Warner and Computer Associates were absolutely fruitless. Time Warner said “Call Computer Associates.” Computer Associates said “call Puresight.” Puresight said nothing. Voice messages were not returned, emails were not answered. Problem was not solved. Fortunately, the customer was OK with simply erasing the hard drive and starting over. But such a drastic step should not have been necessary. If the companies involved had behaved responsibly, done a decent job, and not passed the buck, that customer would not have been inconvenienced, and this computer medic would not have become frustrated and annoyed.

Unfortunately, there seem to be far too few of the good customer-support experiences, and far too many of the bad ones. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t expect exemplary service every time. But is it too much to expect competent service at least most of the time?

The customer settled on a newer refurbished Dell model, paid and left. The following day she called me and said that the computer would not start. The lights were on but the screen was dark. Plus it would not shut down. Oh great–just what I want to hear.

But through a series of questions I determined that the actual situation was this: She had been using the computer at a public wireless access point, and had then put the computer away in its bag without first shutting it down. She had just closed the lid. Meanwhile, the laptop kept running, got hot in the enclosed space of the bag and locked up due to overheating. It had not been set to go into standby mode when its lid was closed. (Standby is a special low-power state).

This explains things, I thought. That’s most likely why her one laptop was a source of so much trouble for her. She probably never, ever actually shut it down. She just closed the lid and forgot about it. Meanwhile the laptop was running the whole time and she didn’t even know it.

I am perhaps a tad unreasonable on this subject, but my opinion is this: If you aren’t going to use an appliance (like a computer) for a while, SHUT IT OFF. At the end of every day, I power off all my computers, printers, monitors, test equipment, anything that draws power. Not only that, I turn off the surge protectors they are plugged into so that the devices receive no current whatsoever. The reasoning is this:  less energy wasted, less chance of damage due to a power surge, less heat that has to be removed by the AC system–a major consideration what with our lengthy warm season here in central Texas. The only downside is that I have to wait maybe 60 seconds for the systems to power on in the morning. Even on the busiest day, I can spare 60 seconds.

Somehow the idea has gotten entrenched in the public mind that it is damaging to computers and other electronic devices to turn them off and on. At some level this is potentially true, because there is an initial thermal shock as power floods through the cold circuits when you hit the start button. But it’s OK, they can take it. Modern electronic devices are designed to handle thousands of startup/shutdown cycles. Look at it this way: If you follow the conventional reasoning, then you should never turn off the lights, never turn off your television or stereo, never turn off your car’s engine (90% of engine wear takes place in the first half-second of operation). Obviously that would be just silly. By not turning off unused electronic devices, you trade the small possibility of a slightly shortened lifespan for the device for the certainty that a lot of energy will be wasted. And that’s not a very good bargain. So if you aren’t going to use that computer for a while, go ahead–turn it off.

This malware is the latest generation of a family of rogue software known by many names going back to at least 2006. The basic MO remains the same: On startup an infected computer’s desktop is taken over by a legitimate-looking program that seems to be finding all manner of malware. As this is unfolding, the software also declares that the computer has been hacked and that the user’s identity is at risk of being stolen, among other messages. The software almost completely monopolizes the system, essentially making it unusable. The hook comes when the program informs you that to get rid of the problem, all you have to do is to register this trial version. Simply click on this link (and pay $49.99) . . .

The perpetrators of this scam have so far kept things fresh by releasing new variants every few days to stay ahead of traditional, database-based antiviral programs. These variants continue to add charming new features, such as routines that block or hide all other executables, layered service protocols that block network activity (except a connection to their server to process payment), and the ability to run in safe mode. Some variants apparently block safe-mode operation altogether. New Vista-specific versions are beginning to gain traction as well. Up to now, primarily machines running Windows XP have been affected.

The infection usually occurs when the user interacts with a bogus (but official-looking) security alert claiming to have found malware. These messages may appear when the user visits a compromised website. ANY interaction with this message typically triggers a surreptitious download of the infectious software. The only safe way to close such a message is to use the task manager (ctrl-alt-delete). Internet connections not filtered through a router are especially at risk.

The reach and sophistication of this scam are surprising and disturbing. Millions of users have been infected, many more than once, and the end is nowhere in sight.

I had heard the call when it came in, on a Saturday about lunchtime, but had chosen not to answer because the special ring identified it as anonymous. It was an easy call (no pun intended). At Computer Medic we generally don’t answer unknown or anonymous calls for all the usual reasons. It’s policy. We are hardly alone in this.  It is, in fact,  a very common (and common-sense) policy.

Apparently, this fellow had called previously, although he had never bothered to leave a message or a callback number.  This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened to us. Over the years this scenario has been repeated often enough for us to recognize it as a syndrome. The callers are almost always male, young to early middle age. The messages usually include a profanity or two, and never, ever include a callback number. Most of the time, the caller clearly intends to be insulting.  Based on what they say and how they say it,  I can only surmise that these people are expecting special treatment, and are annoyed at not getting it. Unfortunately, we’ve learned the hard way that people who expect special treatment tend to be difficult customers.

Then of course there is always the odd case. Once, an anonymous caller left a message saying, “I realize you’re probably not answering because of the blocked number. I’m sorry, but I just got this phone and somehow turned on that feature by accident and can’t figure out how to turn it off.  I’ll call you back in five minutes.” I answered the second call, we had a good conversation, and he turned out to be a pretty good customer. And we figured out how to turn off the number block.

So if you call from an anonymous number and we don’t answer, please don’t take it personally. It’s just policy. Just leave us a callback number and we’ll get back to y0u.

We recently encountered two separate cases of Security 2010 that were, apparently, successfully removed. Yet the users continued to experience frequent browser redirects and tainted search results. Exhaustive examinations of each machine revealed no suspicious executables. Yet in monitoring the IP traffic,  we could see the computers consistently connecting to an address in Eastern Europe immediately before each redirect. How this was happening was a mystery. On a hunch I checked some settings and solved the mystery. The solution actually turned out to be simple. The malware had manually reset DNS primary and secondary values to the aforementioned Eastern European address.

DNS stands for Domain Name Server, and Domain Name Servers are the giant databases that resolve the familiar domain names (e.g. www.yahoo.com) into IP addresses (e.g. 69.147.125.65), which actually define addresses in cyberspace, and which the many routers that make up the Internet actually understand.  Each time you type in a web address into your browser or click on a link, your computer must contact a Domain Name Server to turn that collection of words into an IP address. And each time my customers’ computers attempted to connect to a requested address, the computers would contact the rogue Domain Name Server, which would then falsely resolve the domain name to another unrelated site. Presumably, the owners of the redirecting website were paying the rogue DNS for the redirects. In a way you have to admire their entrepreneurial spirit.

In this case, simply setting the DNS values to default (Obtain DNS address automatically) solved the problem. This setting, the most commonly used, allows your router or Internet Service Provider to connect you to a default DNS.

It turns out that he had carelessly dropped the laptop from a height, severely damaging the case. He said it ran, sort of, but clearly had some problems. He wanted me to replace the parts bearing obvious damage so that he could take it back to Apple and, claiming ignorance, have it fixed under warranty.

Now I’m no saint, but I know a bright ethical line when I see one. This was no more a warranty issue than if the young man had worked over his laptop with a ballpeen hammer. I was genuinely offended that he had tried to recruit me into what was, in effect, a scam. I paused a beat and then said something like:  “I am not going to be a part of that deception. You were careless with your laptop and broke it, and it’s your responsibility to fix it.” The young man seemed shocked that a business would turn down the chance to make a buck. I was shocked that he was shocked. Is that what our society has come to?

I have no great love for Apple. I think their products are overpriced and overrated, and I think Steve Jobs is a dictatorial prick who would take out his grandmother if she somehow threatened share price. And don’t even get me started about the uber-irritating, cooler-than-thou Apple mythos. But none of that matters a bit because fair is fair. Period.

This is the work of highly skilled, well-funded actors. The authors of Security 2010 have managed to infiltrate large numbers of legitimate, heavily visited websites with their infectious mother-ship software. Simply visiting a compromised website is often enough to deliver the malware. In other cases the user will receive an official-looking message stating that spyware has been detected, and that the user should download software to remove it. Following the attached link delivers the malware to the unsuspecting user.

Infected machines will display an legitimate-looking program that runs on startup bearing the name Security 2010, Antivirus Pro 2010, or any of a number of variations on this theme. The program appears to be scanning for, and finding, malware. The software also displays a rotating menu of  scary messages about dangerous malware supposedly found lurking on the system. The whole display is completely bogus. The software also displays a message that the user has an unregistered version installed, and offers a link to register the software, for a hefty fee of course. However, paying these extortionists will NOT make the problem go away. It is all simply a scam intended to separate the user from his or her money. Unfortunately, lots of people have taken the bait and handed over their credit card numbers to these criminals.

Security 2010 thoroughly monopolizes the user’s computer, rendering it essentially useless. The software also employs a number of defensive strategies to defeat removal, including deactivating firewalls, turning off anti-malware software, and disabling standard system-management tools such as the task manager and, more rarely, regedit. It may also disrupt the .exe file association, making it difficult to run executable files.

Beyond rendering your computer unusable, Security 2010 does not appear to be actively malicious. But it opens security holes that leave the computer vulnerable to other malware infections. Left unattended the problems could grow even worse. At Computer Medic, we have developed very effective methods for dealing with the Security 2010 software, and would be happy to assist you if you should become infected by it.

Malware (“malicious software“) has been around almost as long as computers have. But it has changed drastically changed over the years. Once upon a time, most malware was basically digital vandalism, whose purpose was to wreak general havoc, as well to call attention to its creator and show off his programming skills. The programs were simple, easily defeated, and generally speaking, fairly harmless. But with the rise of the Internet, criminals became aware of the vast possibilities for making money using various forms of malware. The schemes have gotten progressively more sophisticated as the stakes have risen. Now, the making and distribution of malware is a multibillion-dollar business, controlled by international criminal syndicates. It is a virtual arms race, and the end is nowhere in sight.

“How DOES this happen?” I often hear. Most malware arrives via the Internet, as you might imagine. Viruses typically arrive in infected email attachments, or buried in programs downloaded from non-legitimate sites. Much of the malware that travels via infected email practically announces itself; it comes from someone you don’t know, or have no reason to hear from. The subject line doesn’t quite make sense or is poorly written, contains an unseemly invitation, or demands that you do something RIGHT NOW. And there is always an attachment. It’s the attachment that contains the tainted payload. As long as the attachment is unopened, nothing happens. Viruses and worms are spread in this way. A virus replicates by infecting executable programs on the host computer, whereas a worm propagates from computer to computer across a network connection, typically in a work environment.

Viruses and worms require some action by a user to spread. But more and more, malware is delivered surreptitiously, without any overt action by the recipient. NEXT Stealth Infections: Trojans, Rootkits, and Backdoors.