Oh no, we"ve been SPIMmed!

07.06.2005
Von Computerworld Hong

Apocryphal IT tales of viruses, worms, and malware abound. Everyone knows someone who claims their Windows-box was digitally demolished by demons delivered by disk or dodgy download.

But, nine times out of ten, it"s a software incompatibility, hardware malfunction, or "operator headspace" -- the inability of the user to correctly determine a usage function. As in, the mouse has come unplugged, or the keyboard has been rinsed with a can of Schweppes cream soda, causing a carbohydrate crash.

That said, viruses are a genuine menace. They can and do infect consumer and enterprise systems. But when people yell "virus!", experience has taught us to troubleshoot the problem in a holistic fashion, rather than reaching for the PC-cillin (which recently had PCs illin", but that"s another tale...).

So when we read of viruses affecting mobile phones or instant messaging systems, we look for real-life examples. Unfortunately, in the case of the latter, we didn"t have to look too far:

CWHK staffer 1: hey do not open any links that u see appear from my IM that start with "rofl"

CWHK staffer 2: uh...huh?

CWHK staffer 1: or anything that is "templates4friends....."

CWHK staffer 1: frikkin got sent some link just now....seems its a virus i think

CWHK staffer 1: so if u see anything appearing randomly from me - ignore it

CWHK staffer 2: i"m not getting anything...an IM virus? cool!

CWHK staffer 1: not even sure yet

CWHK staffer 1: rofl

http://[DODGY LINK DELETED]

CWHK staffer 2: there it goes!

Fortunately, removing the infected IM program and re-installing took care of this particular unpleasantness.

The unbearable lightness of spam

We got a slithering piece of hideous pink pork emulsion in our inbox. It read, in part:

"In fact let me flat out blank say, DO NOT READ the rest of this newsletter, hit the delete button, grab a cup of coffee and have a nice day!"

How very considerate of this anonymous individual. A shame that this piece of absurd gibberish represented another example of the waste of bandwidth spam represents. The Internet, the greatest communication tool of our century, and it"s used by greed-motivated fiends to peddle rubbish to people who don"t want it. By comparison, the snake-oil salesmen of the nineteenth century were philanthropists.

So we took this anonymous porcine peddler at his or her word, did not read, hit the delete button, grabbed a cup of java and had a nice day. Thanks for the advice. We hope our readers will follow suit: just say "DELETE."

Errant Excel

It happens: someone sends an e-mail and cc"s the entire list of recipients. Usually it"s your pal who sends those fluffy jokes/inspirational tales/cute-kitten-JPEGs. You recognize relatives, fellow pals, and a few dead e-mail addresses in the massive list, and hope that none of them are using a PC so infested that malware that your own address will be sniffed out and shipped directly to spammesilly.com.

But sometimes, PR people cc: their lists by accident. Usually they seem unaware, but a recent press release took things a step further.

The original release caused barely a ripple as it slammed into the groaning inboxes of CWHK"s editorial staff, already full to the brim with a seething mixture of essential communication, press releases of varying intensity, and cybertripe. But it was quickly followed by a terse one-line e-mail: the PR rep in question "would like to recall the message."

Well, fine. We"ve all sent e-mails we"d like to "recall." But that"s not the way it works, you click "send" and it gets sent. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

This e-mail too was barely noted amid the crashing hubbub of CWHK production. But a THIRD e-mail from said PR agent appeared. This one began: "Dear XX, I am sorry for the previous email that included the media list in the release distribution, please ignore the list." Thus alerting us to something we would otherwise have missed, hey, there"s a list of media contacts!

With this new information in hand, we checked further down the list (past the bogus missives from relatives of dead African leaders and surreal poetry concealing pitches for enzyme-inhibiting medications) and found, as promised, a list of Hong Kong IT media contacts.

In an Excel spreadsheet, no less!

Oh and by the way, some are out-of-date.