I Still Don't Sleep At Night

I KNOW... LET'S TALK ABOUT COMPUTER CRIME

Here's the latest: I've been turned down by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. States Attorney's Office. I disabled all the network's operations equipment that said network or remote. As a consequence I no longer get a start menu so now I don't have a control panel. I did manage to get to the event viewer through safe mode, but the properties which tell the story are sealed shut again. My burgundy bra and my beaded ashtray are missing. They've made the picture logo for the welcome screen a chess board for the administrator who I assume is still me, although I administrate nothing. Sure it's like chess. They have the king and all their pieces are queens. I have a king and all my pieces are drunken pawns.

Yeah, I went out to the sidewalk to see Mars last night in my big t-shirt that I wear to bed. I left my pile of clothes I'd worn that day in the bathroom. This morning I couldn't find my bra. The cat wasn't wearing it. No one else had been there THAT I KNOW OF. Nice trophy for an immature boys I suppose. And my damn little made-in-India ashtray that had been on my desk that I'd had forever was now missing. It was the only ashtray I used. It had to have been sitting precariously near the ballpoint pen wreckage from the other day, but I can't remember if it was still there or not when I found the broken pen. I think not.

I continue to research hackers, Windows XP vulnerabilities, security, worms, viruses, as though if I just read enough they'll be gone. Microsoft sent me their answer today from the Technet Security Response Team. I filed a report with them after reading on their site that they wanted to know where their products had failed in terms of security. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Tonight I read the terse reply. Had I heard of blaster worm? I wrote and wrote and wrote some more. Remind me to do the piece about how they are tied in with Homeland Security and plan to cash in on our privacy through windows updates, will you? Maybe tomorrow if not tonight.

I did read something interesting along those lines though. If it's not hackers per se, and not a virus or worm, then I have "rats" I can buy the definition of the remote code driven control on my computer. I just said to someone the other day how they "bite through firewalls like rats through cheese." They just bit through the second Zone.alarm. Rest in peace. It's last message was so sad. It said something like don't trust it's integrity because it had been interfered with by outside agents. It gave it's all till the end. Didn't get to live too long.

The U.S. States Attorney's Office told me to try my local police department. Been there done that. The police officer not only told me to call Dell, he dialed the phone and listened to the menu. Then he said, "See they're talking about that worm. You probably have that worm." That was that. Meanwhile my worm writes me letters and circles my files with little notes "Maryellen this article was in a journal put out by Linux." Personal attention worm all the way. Today I read an article where the Director of the Computer Crime Security Survey, Patrice Rapalus said, significantly, "There is much more illegal and unauthorized activity going on in cyberspace than corporations admit to their clients, stockholders and business partners or report to law enforcement." No wonder I saw considering the brick wall, disbelief and apathy I have found. (This article offers a free copy of the Computer Intrusion Squad's Computer Crime Security Survey. You may want to check it out. It was made with the San Francisco Office of the FBI.)

Here's another thing I continue to read about: The mind of the hacker. I keep reading that some wear white hats. Some actually do work for security firms and do it to test security. Maybe mine really do work for Microsoft and want to see who finally helps me. Help me now I say. Here's some more interesting factoids about hackers.

And while we're on the subject, which sad to say I guess I always am, here's an Intruder Detection Checklist to see if your system has been compromised. You could read all the articles at http://www.cert.org. There's a lot more to security than having a firewall. I read one article that just came out and said that if you have Windows XP and a fast internet connection with AOL you might as well forget depending on your firewall. End-users connected to AOL (like me) over DSL or cable modem may be assigned an IP address from an AOL network block in addition to the IP address obtained as a result of the DSL or cable modem connection. Traffic to the AOL-assigned address may be routed to the end-user system in a way that may bypass the personal firewall enabling intruders. And so they get you.

I hate it when people think I'm so stupid I didn't even have a firewall up.

One of these days we can talk about all the different ways to attack a computer. If you think e-mail attachments or instant messages are all you need to worry about, try on some of these styles: What I have is denial of service attack launched by remote network. It might have been carried out through rate limiting, packet filtering, packet flooding, TCP floods, ICMP echo request/reply (e.g. ping floods) UDP packet floods, a flaw in RPC endpoint mapper, or, as I said before, an exploitation of the vulnerability of the RPC interface. I know they're working codes on me because I find them. They still leave some files out. Just today I found a file dated Monday titled "Security" with a long list of privileges I have lost. I tried to copy it but don't know if I got it or not. This computer won't open it.

So that's today's phreaking hacking news. Tonight I'll probably do what I do most nights. I get a Diet Coke and sit at my desk and pretend I still have a computer. I enter by safe mode and find my way to folders in local C. Then click and click on a bunch of files I can't open. They got too smart for me. They have suddenly switched to putting a lot of their files in open with AOL files. I guess they don't plan to ever let me online. So I flip through the files and see what there is in notepad that I can open. They offered me CompuServe to install but I figure it's just more of their meanness since they won't let me online. They put it on my desktop a couple of times just to taunt me.

Do you think these guys really are Republicans? Really do work for Microsoft? Really are fans of John Ashcroft? I'm screwed, that's all I know. Who can I call tomorrow on my bugged phone?

Night.