It's A Freaking War Out There!

The battle raged for hours. Hi tech weapons against an insidious enemy. The forces of darkness were many and varied. Some were surprisingly simple and quickly vanquished. Others fought back. When the big guns were brought in, they seemed to already know the weak points and spiked the fuses and prevented their charges from firing.  Still others offered up chimeras that were vaporized while the core forces of evil slithered deep into the unseen depths of the battlefield. Still the battle rages on. Many were Hydras that fought ferociously and then, when defeated, simply grew another copy and rejoined the battle. Precious treasure was being held captive so nuking the battlefield was out of the question. Time ticked on. One by one, the enemy was eliminated. Over and over again the soldiers of light swept the battlefield.

Who were these devils? They were not unknown. As they fell, their identities were discerned. Strange sounding names, but vicious all the same. The deadliest were viruses called Win32.Worm.Stuxnet.A, Worm.P2P.Palevo.FP and many more. Then came a class of deviants called hijackers. They endeavored to seize the routes that led to and from cyberspace and called themselves Zlob, Google Redirection and Look2Me among many other names.  Still more were found, including an entire division called CoolWWWSearch that contained no less than a hundred known cells. And the battle still raged on. Keyloggers rapidly stole and recorded our keystrokes as we launched attack after attack sending that information to some black hole in cyberspace where our strategy was studied and plans for our defeat were plotted. They died by the hundreds, PAL Keylogger Pro!, VIRUT and VIRUX just to name a few.  And inside the gates of our world we found Trojans bearing gifts. Deadly gifts, we discovered as we ascertained who they were. Generic.dx, Adclicker.G and CyberDefender were just a few that were dispatched from the field of battle.

Our losses too were formidable. One of our mightiest warriors fell as he stepped from his chariot. Norton Antivirus will be remembered. Spybot S&D was finally victorious but not before messages were broadcast by the enemy that Spybot had fallen. We nearly despaired.  Lavasoft fought bravely and well but was unable to overcome all the dark forces. Malwarebytes wielded a mighty sickle and sent many to Valhalla. Microsoft Security Essentials picked up the sword from the fallen Norton and the enemy felt his wrath. Finally, fewer and fewer of the enemy were found. Hundreds of thousands of hiding places had to be checked one by one.

Not wishing to focus on minutiae, but to see an overview of the broad results, we looked at the totals. Two hundred and fifty three viruses had been extinguished. Over eleven hundred spyware entities had been laid to rest. Still, one hijacker escaped but our forces needed to regroup and analyze the battle. We will prepare a strategy to find and destroy Personal Antispy tomorrow. Right now our concern is to ensure that the defeated ones do not make entry back to our world. Our anti-virus program set up firewalls and manned the bulwarks surrounding our world. Our Router from Linksys establishes a Barbican, or in our Hi-tech language, a hardware firewall outside the gates. Spybot closes the known entry points that are used by some of the scum we have obliterated. We hide our addresses behind the firewall to make it more difficult for evil to find us. Microsoft launches forces to close unused ports on our borders. Finally we feel more secure. We have done all that can be done today.

What do these forces of darkness want with us? They want our money. Either directly by finding or tricking us into giving them our credit cards and bank accounts or by getting us to buy something that we didn’t know we were buying. And, if they can’t get that from us, then they want to use our PC to attack other computers for nefarious purposes.  What is their biggest ally? Our trust. We trust that no one would attack our PC. We trust that someone pointing us to a particular item only has our best interest at heart, even though we have never met him or her.

 The above story, while stylized and romanticized, is nonetheless true. Do not hesitate. Defend your PC. Antivirus, Spyware tools, firewalls (both hardware and software) and common sense can keep you safe. Get them today.