Who me ? It’s Monday again, dear reader, and you know what that means: another dive into the Who, Me? confessional, to share stories of computer problems that Reg readers managed to pretend everything had gone well.
This week, meet a reader we’ll call “Declan” who describes himself as “a designer working with CAD to design machines” – but with enough technical savvy to essentially learn how to use the software. Indeed, during his first job in the 90s, he was considered the “technician” and the reference for assistance.
The consulting firm he worked for had a bunch of Windows machines, a few Unix boxes – mostly from Sun and Silicon Graphics – plus a Digital Alpha RISC machine, running the special version of Windows NT that Microsoft had designed for those boxes. For those who don’t remember this short-lived project, it was essentially a coy move by Microsoft towards the idea that there were non-Intel processors in the world. Most of the work porting NT to Alpha was done by Digital, and when that company was bought by Compaq, the dream was over.
Anyway, long story short, Windows NT ran on Alpha, but not very well, and there were virtually no native applications for it – almost everything ran in emulation. However, at the time the Alpha 500 MHz was fast enough that performance was adequate. This was the machine Declan used.
Declan’s various tasks (in addition to his CAD work) saw him installing Windows, taking care of the network and, above all, trying to stop his colleagues from spreading viruses.
Declan understood that a virus hitting his employer’s network would likely lead to a work stoppage, because antivirus software at the time was typically only updated after infections became widespread. So he has been very diligent in asking everyone to be careful while opening unknown attachments or files from untrusted sources.
Then as today, prevention is better than cure.
Then as now, people make mistakes.
One tired and stressed afternoon, Declan received an email containing an Excel spreadsheet. Thinking it looked legit enough, he double-clicked to open it.
Immediately, his screen was obscured by error messages. He panicked when he realized the spreadsheet must have contained a macrovirus. Then he realized he was about to bring the company down by doing exactly what he had advised everyone not to do. Too bad ! Humiliation!
After a moment, however, a calm came over him as he read the error messages.
The spreadsheet was indeed infected. However, the worm it contained was designed to open the recipient’s contact list in Outlook and send itself to everyone, thereby perpetuating its spread – for no reason other than to spread further.
Wasn’t the world beautiful before ransomware?
What this worm didn’t anticipate was that Declan was running both Excel and Outlook in emulation, and the integration between them in that environment was so bad that it couldn’t work. The worm continued to try to create emails and send them, but failed each time.
Declan managed to stop the flood of error messages on his own machine and realized he would never have to tell anyone about his tragic lack of care.
If you have something you’ve always wanted to say, tell us about it in an email to Who, Me? and we will purify your soul – anonymously, of course. ®
Who me ? It’s Monday again, dear reader, and you know what that means: another dive into the Who, Me? confessional, to share stories of computer problems that Reg readers managed to pretend everything had gone well.
This week, meet a reader we’ll call “Declan” who describes himself as “a designer working with CAD to design machines” – but with enough technical savvy to essentially learn how to use the software. Indeed, during his first job in the 90s, he was considered the “technician” and the reference for assistance.
The consulting firm he worked for had a bunch of Windows machines, a few Unix boxes – mostly from Sun and Silicon Graphics – plus a Digital Alpha RISC machine, running the special version of Windows NT that Microsoft had designed for those boxes. For those who don’t remember this short-lived project, it was essentially a coy move by Microsoft towards the idea that there were non-Intel processors in the world. Most of the work porting NT to Alpha was done by Digital, and when that company was bought by Compaq, the dream was over.
Anyway, long story short, Windows NT ran on Alpha, but not very well, and there were virtually no native applications for it – almost everything ran in emulation. However, at the time the Alpha 500 MHz was fast enough that performance was adequate. This was the machine Declan used.
Declan’s various tasks (in addition to his CAD work) saw him installing Windows, taking care of the network and, above all, trying to stop his colleagues from spreading viruses.
Declan understood that a virus hitting his employer’s network would likely lead to a work stoppage, because antivirus software at the time was typically only updated after infections became widespread. So he has been very diligent in asking everyone to be careful while opening unknown attachments or files from untrusted sources.
Then as today, prevention is better than cure.
Then as now, people make mistakes.
One tired and stressed afternoon, Declan received an email containing an Excel spreadsheet. Thinking it looked legit enough, he double-clicked to open it.
Immediately, his screen was obscured by error messages. He panicked when he realized the spreadsheet must have contained a macrovirus. Then he realized he was about to bring the company down by doing exactly what he had advised everyone not to do. Too bad ! Humiliation!
After a moment, however, a calm came over him as he read the error messages.
The spreadsheet was indeed infected. However, the worm it contained was designed to open the recipient’s contact list in Outlook and send itself to everyone, thereby perpetuating its spread – for no reason other than to spread further.
Wasn’t the world beautiful before ransomware?
What this worm didn’t anticipate was that Declan was running both Excel and Outlook in emulation, and the integration between them in that environment was so bad that it couldn’t work. The worm continued to try to create emails and send them, but failed each time.
Declan managed to stop the flood of error messages on his own machine and realized he would never have to tell anyone about his tragic lack of care.
If you have something you’ve always wanted to say, tell us about it in an email to Who, Me? and we will purify your soul – anonymously, of course. ®