Thursday, December 15, 2005
Computers can be such a pain...
Computers can be such a pain in the ...Annie is having trouble with her system. She suspects that she's got a hidden spam proxy agent on her system. She's recovered it (HP systems have a factory image installed such that the owner can rebuild the system.), but she's still having troubles with her email accounts. I think it could be the email provider, but I could have overlooked a virus. However, there are no indications that she does have a virus because:
1. Norton Antivirus is giving clean scans.
2. There are no CPU usage spikes.
3. Other than system freezes, which HP Pavilions have anyway, there are no other unusual indications of a virus.
4. Netstat -a shows normal processes listening on seemingly normal ports. Now she had 14 listening processes according to netstat, but none of them were talking to Russia or any place unusual.
So, bottom line, I can't rule out a virus without a separate antivirus scan from another vendor's product. I tried to have her scan the system using http://housecall.trendmicro.com but it never downloaded the control necessary to scan her system for some odd reason.
I've signed up for a WebEx free trial offer. WebEx will allow me to remote into her system and check it out. Hopefully, she'll let me try it. Perhaps I'll pin down the issue.
On another note, my workstation at work is so locked down, it's broken. I can't print. I'm thinking that our migration has been something of a fiasco. I'm a qualified system administrator and I can't fix my own system because of corporate and security policies. Makes one feel really useful. On the other hand the company suffers because my productivity is crippled due to poor planning and implementation because of someone's poor judgement. On the bright side, I'm still being paid. Merry Christmas!
1. Norton Antivirus is giving clean scans.
2. There are no CPU usage spikes.
3. Other than system freezes, which HP Pavilions have anyway, there are no other unusual indications of a virus.
4. Netstat -a shows normal processes listening on seemingly normal ports. Now she had 14 listening processes according to netstat, but none of them were talking to Russia or any place unusual.
So, bottom line, I can't rule out a virus without a separate antivirus scan from another vendor's product. I tried to have her scan the system using http://housecall.trendmicro.com but it never downloaded the control necessary to scan her system for some odd reason.
I've signed up for a WebEx free trial offer. WebEx will allow me to remote into her system and check it out. Hopefully, she'll let me try it. Perhaps I'll pin down the issue.
On another note, my workstation at work is so locked down, it's broken. I can't print. I'm thinking that our migration has been something of a fiasco. I'm a qualified system administrator and I can't fix my own system because of corporate and security policies. Makes one feel really useful. On the other hand the company suffers because my productivity is crippled due to poor planning and implementation because of someone's poor judgement. On the bright side, I'm still being paid. Merry Christmas!
