Many thanks to Rorschach112 at Geeks To Go for pointing the way to ending the problem, and to the lads and/or lasses of Kaspersky for their TDSSKiller that took out the problem.

The machine was invested with a problem with many names: Win32/Olmarik, Rootkit.Win32.TDSS.u, Win32/Alureon.F, Backdoor.Tidserv!.inf. It installed itself in the boot area of the hard disk and communicated with various malware sites.

The clues that it was on the machine were the redirection of search engine results and an increase in boot time. Eliminating the stuff you could see would only last until you re-booted when it would relaunch and recreate what you deleted.

ESET warned about it and blocked the calls to the ‘mothership’, but it couldn’t remove it completely. Messing about in the boot sector is definitely a specialized field, and if you aren’t 100% confident about what you are doing, you could render the computer inert.

I don’t need the computer I cleaned up, now that I have the emulator working, but it is always good to have a back-up.

En Garde!

What was that?

[Editor: Lucrezia scans for trouble as she takes in the afternoon sun. When you have been as nasty as she is, this is a reasonable precaution.

Friday Ark

In the early hours of January 13th, 1969 I was forced to accept something that I had known for a while, but had pushed to the back of my mind: I was mortal and was going to die.

This was the first of several incidents when my chance of survival was a good deal less than 1 in 2. This wasn’t the scariest, but it was the first, and following on the heels of the terrible events of 1968, it had the biggest impact.

In the end the only “death” was an airplane, Rivet Ball, the Air Force’s only RC-135S. The military version of the Boeing 707, the fuselage broke in half, like an eggshell, on impact. A very talented pilot, John Achor, the aircraft commander, was responsible for that miracle.

I provide more detail on my other site.