Two Bits – 10 July 2015

Some days I’ve got water and no electricity. Others I’ve got electricity and no water. Some days I’ve got neither. Between water-shedding and electricity-shedding ‘schedules’ that happen at random, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Haauw, it’s hell in Africa.

Every now and again a week comes along when I wish computers did not exist.

Last Monday, getting the paper ready, the staff said, “We can’t open any of the picture files!”

I rushed over to the server and yes, all of our previous week’s photographs were unreadable. In fact all of our pictures back to 2000 had been destroyed. The files appreared to be there, but would not open. Thousands of other files had also been junked.

Panic stations! Luckily my computer guy, Nick van der Walt of HDI Solutions, came at my call and quickly discovered the culprit.

Our system had been attacked by a thug-bug called “Ransomware”. It’s a piece of software written by people with very malicious intent and therefore goes by the name of “malware”.

They left messages which said: “We have entered your system and encrypted your files. If you want them de-encrypted, reply and we will send you the key.”

Nick said that if we responded, we would be hustled for a large amount of money, but had no chance of getting any “key” from them. They would simply disappear. Modern day pirates!

What I wanted to know was how malware got into our system? The answer is through a .zip file.

I quite frequently get emails from some random person saying: “I hope my resume’s okay. Please open the attached file, regards John.”

It’s such an innocuous looking email that many would think nothing of opening it. I mean, we’re often advertising for staff.

I always delete these emails on principle, but someone in our office must have clicked on one. Well put it this way, I’m not taking the blame. And nobody in the office is admitting to doing the dirty, either! And I don’t blame them for not owning up, the mood I was in.

However, dear fellow computer slaves, do not – ever – click on one of those unsolicited zip folders. The bug will go through your system like a bagful of green apricots through a six-year-old and the result will be not dissimilar.

Nick also warned me that I might receive emails from persons or companies that I know and that they could contain the bug. Sure enough, this week I got one from a local company, with a message to the effect that the invoice I had asked for was attached (as a zip file).

Being suspicious, I phoned the manager and asked if he had sent it to me. The poor fellow was in a state. He had been hacked by the same bug and his computer was spewing out identical emails to everyone in his address book. He didn’t know what to do! So I gave him my computer guy’s number and wished him luck.

What about my data, you may ask? Luckily I have a full backup of my server on an external hard drive, so was able to restore the essential bits for producing last week’s paper within a couple of hours and the remainder over a few days. Whew!

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We never really grow up, we only learn how to behave in public.