you'll bleed out of control

I'm pretty arrogant when it comes to computer viruses. I never go out of my way to install security patches or Anti-Virus software. Perhaps that's just left over from when I used to run linux. The times I did have a virus protection program installed on my computer I ended up uninstalling because it significantly slowed the performance of my PC. And tweaking my PC for games was imperative, as you are all well aware by now.

Now let's look at the events of the LAN party, because I'm pretty sure that's where I had Win32.Welchia given to me. A nice little worm to violate my pristine (yet unpatched) PC. I'm not sure who the carrier was, but I was the only victim as there were two Win9x PCs and the rest were patched WinXP machines. I suppose I deserved it, since I never update my Windows installations while inside my trusted network. Perhaps it's some form of Computer Karma for my constant mockery of the victims of MSBlaster and SoBig.F.

The worm didn't actually take hold until yesterday, when it detected an active internet connection while I was updating this site. My computer rebooted without my intervention, and all of a sudden traffic on my home network increased a thousandfold. For an instant I thought maybe my site was slashdotted; but let's be realistic here. Then there were the mysterious programs running in my process list. I panicked.

As if you couldn't tell by trying to visit the site in the last couple of days, the webserver also got hit, and as a result I did some things to alleviate the problem I probably shouldn't have. Tonight it's finally back online, and my network here is back to normal for the time being.

I'd like to thank Kapersky Labs for the shareware copy of their anti-virus software that helped me troubleshoot this problem. I'd also like to thank Pest Patrol for detecting the worm's activity - since initially all I had was Cool Beans' network chart showing me I was sending out 7 KB/s and flooding my LAN. Lastly I'd like to thank the good folks over at Symantec for providing a clean, easy to understand method of removal, leaving my boxes minty fresh.

Let that be a lesson to you - never go to a LAN party unprotected.