Tuesday, September 30, 2003
MY NEW ADDICTION
Yes folks, I am now addicted to being hacked. I mean it sounds ugly but it must be true. As you may have noticed by my recent, infrequent, posts the only thing I have time for anymore is reading about computer security--ironic when you know that my computer is still hacked--and playing mind games with the hacker.
In fact, today I played a few rounds of "You'll never open that floppy/yes I will, yes I will." When I gave up trying to open my debugging tools, I opened one of his files which contained a little cartoon slide show. The slide show was all about how wonderful computers can be when you just learn to share them on a network. Once you learn that you must share, you can go online, put your photos online, watch dvd's, make slide shows, etc. The theme (and accompanying picture) was "You have the keys." So fine, I wrote him a letter (with my Word Perfect which, surprisingly, is still installed), and lied and said, I surrender. I will be a good girl. What do they want me to do? Just let me use my computer again. In response I got the picture of the keys again. But the computer is still closed off from me and nothing works right.
In desperation and anger, and with some terrible craziness, I called Dell tech again today. Maybe I just wanted to yell at someone, but maybe I wanted someone else to think about fixing the situation for a while. I demanded that they come out to the house and stop talking to me like I'm a crazy person. I told them eight or ten times was enough to realize that re-formating and re-installing wasn't going to lose the hacker. I demanded to speak to a supervisor. Next thing I know I'm putting on the Dell Resource CD waiting for the debugging stuff to load which it never did. I told the tech the hacker prevented the CD from booting right. The tech wanted to get off the phone. He said he's sending me another CD which will solve all my problems. But before he got off he had to ask, "You have McAfee, right? Why don't we run a virus scan right now." I told him viruses don't create slide shows, and that I deeply resented another Dell person talking to me like I'm crazy. What is so crazy about the idea of the worthless piece of crap Windows is being hacked? I ask you?
So yesterday I spent six hours at the library reading and making photocopies of everything from how to write automated scripts to install windows, how to clear the CMOS, how to remove the network card, 17 pages of info on the remote access desktop, client and VPN, more tool kits, more network stuff, and boy am I excited: a new book came for me: Hack Attacks Revealed A Complete Reference With Custom Security Hacking Toolkit by John Chirillo. It's 944 pages long. That should keep me from doing laundry for another month.
Oh yeah, I'm obsessed. I don't do much that I'm supposed to. I live on Diet Coke and Dean's Fudge Bars. I forget to take showers. I buy plastic picnic silverware and don't wash dishes. I can't remember if I fed the cat or not some days. I make long lists of advisories, bulletins, and articles I must get when I get to the library. I am in trouble at work for doing my photocopy filing sitting down on the job when I'm supposed to be standing up working. One of my best friends who has known me forever told me she can hear it in my voice that I am on my way back to the hospital soon if I don't let go. I can't let go. I don't want him to win.
My mother got angry at me last night. I tried to explain why I can't just hire someone to fix the problem. When I call these so-called computer repairmen and tell them I haven't been connected to the internet for months, they just don't get it. They apparently have never heard of VPN's, remote access, or wireless technology. They insist I'm nuts and that kind of puts me off hiring them. The last group I called, The Geek Squad, bragged about the big time stars whose computers they fixed when I asked if they were A+ certified. They hadn't heard of wireless technology either.
So my mother was practically screaming at me over the phone to take the computer up to Best Buy and tell them to fix it and just not tell them what was wrong with it. If you knew what all was wrong with it you'd know how ridiculous this is. Like for example, it's on a network and I don't want to be on a network for starters. I want to be just me and my printer again. How do you fix that? How do you fix it that he has my IP address, open back door, open ports, is now sharing my most recent firewall, has loaded my computer full of script, code and trojans guaranteed to help him always get back in. Oh, and he has a sense of humor, I forget to tell you, if you like hacker's humor. He let me actually read the properties of the events viewer one day. It was going on and on with the information, errors and warnings and suddenly pop up ads were showing up in the event viewer--not as pop up ads typically look but as event viewer errors look except that the text would be like "Joan has a full time mimi cam in her dorm room. Want to see?" There were a bunch like that.
I'm depressed. I'm going home to watch t.v. Maybe tomorrow he'll move out. He had a file of guest user pictures. I selected one of a suitcase and zoomed in on it until it was huge and left it for him. I don't know thouugh if hints mean much to him.
