The Worms Crawl In

By Jerry Pournelle

September 15, 2003

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Column 278

After I wrote this month's column, I realized it has a theme: social engineering. Most of the really famous hackers weren't all that sophisticated at computer technology, they were good at talking people into cooperating with them to give them passwords and various other means of access to systems they wanted into.

Nearly all of last August's attacks depended on the victim's cooperation, either by opening mail attachments, or by not installing security modifications. Alas, there's no patch for the human brain.

A Worm Story

Much of this column will be about worms, viruses, and other malware, and what you can do about them. I begin with a story about the effect of malware on real people.

Richard Pournelle spent Labor Day weekend at Puerto Santo Tomas, a resort area on the Pacific side of Northern Baja California. The only Internet connection there is through DirecPC satellite. (There's no telephone line to Santo Tomas.)

Alas, the Dell computer there was connected directly to the Satellite modem; no router, and no firewall software.

In August the system was infected by the W32Blaster Worm. It came in directly, not through e-mail, and the computer was infected without any cooperation from the users. After infection e-mail became useless. Because they are in a remote location it took 2 weeks to recover.

A number of people sent in requests for reservations. They weren't received at the resort, so there was no way to tell people the place was full up. Thus over the weekend a number of people drove in only to find there was no place for them. The proprietors did the best they could, even renting houses from the villagers so that tourists would have some place to stay, but people were still turned away after a long drive.

They also rely on e-mail via satellite for emergency services communications, and of course that didn't work for a week. Fortunately no one was hurt and there was no need for communications, but there might have been.

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