At The Mercy Of A Worm!

Technology has progressed at such a rapid pace that people who were born in the late 70’s and early 80’s are struggling to keep pace with it. Mind boggling gadgets are being invented and mass produced. I find myself on the slower side when it comes to technology. Apart from a 7 year old computer and a 3 year old bike and a 9 year old wrist watch, I have nothing in my personal possession that can be called as “Technology.” No mobile phone, no music player, no iPod, no walkman…..and the list goes on…

So it’s understandable, that when I go around saying that I can survive without technology, people are bewildered. People these days find it impossible to live without their beloved gadgets. When these gadgets stop functioning, their whole life comes to a standstill.

I had seen my friends suffer and I was smirking deep down inside that this would never happen to me. But it happened.

My computer got infected by a worm which has a very silly name. It completely crippled my computer. AVG antivirus was disabled. My computer would reboot every time I tried to access the task manager, folder options and the run command. Unknown programs would run and I couldn’t stop them. I tried everything from scanning in the safe mode to restoring using the system restore. But to no avail.

Finally I turned to the IT department at the company where I work, for help. Got my hard disk scanned using an enterprise grade antivirus solution. It found just 3 copies of the worm on the hard disk. A free online tool known as RRT did the rest removing all the restrictions that the worm had put in place and my computer was up and running.

Worms are nasty things, both the living ones and the ones that lurk in their digital forms. I was brought down to my knees by one called W32.Silly FDC.

One can be carefully only to a point and pray that the free antivirus would do the rest. My friends advised me to try Avast, another free antivirus solution. Meanwhile the IT department advised me to purchase a solution.

I have placed a club next to my computer. I intend to clobber any worm that comes anywhere near it. A firewall…what is that?