It's BaAAaaack! My computer went in for a complete wipe, low level reformatting of both drives, and a resetting of the bios to allow my machine to accept uninfected software system files, only to watch the worm rebuild itself again!
*UPDATE 13*
20 August 1997 - Wednesday
Sighhhhhh......I have finally got my computer back from the doctor, only to spend the last day plus trying to get all my netware and variables back in place to get mail, retrieve my site for local access and future editing, and in general trying to put my computing life back together after trying (TRYING!) to kill the worm in my computer.
It's BaAAaaack! My computer went in for a complete wipe, low level reformatting of both drives, and a resetting of the bios to allow my machine to accept uninfected software system files, only to watch the worm rebuild itself again!
The only thing I can figure is that it squirreled a bootstrap segment in the monitor's bios, and after reconnection to the net, it pulled in the rest of it's body, crashed my computer a few times to reseat itself in the system software again!
If I didn't know better, I'd believe the thing was invincible, perhaps even a computer demon capable of possesing it's chosen host victim by sheer will.
It ruined A: drive by banging the head rapidly (an AWFUL racket like a wounded digital predator!) when I opened one of it's sensative files once too often, which was command.pif, so I had to have a new floppy drive installed.
Trying to delete command.pif caused me to chase it all over both hard drives (it even created the recycled bin on a reformatted and blank D: drive, and hid in the trash!), and it retaliated by physical destruction on my machine!
BOY! If Rosalie hadn't watched most of the battle and confirmed that I wasn't hallucinating, I would begin to doubt my own sanity!
The upshot of my battles is that I'm going to have to tell you up front that my email is compromised, very likely monitored, and having had several folks who have contacted me by mail report several of the same symptoms on their machines, my advice is to watch, but unless you are ready to do battle with some rather talented info-warfare net demons, contact me by snail mail at: DavidC - PO Box 733 - Silverton, OR. 97381.
The worm seems quite content (so far) to just be a spy and add a few extra outgoing files (usually only when I get and receive new mail), and isn't destructive unless you try to pull it out by it's slimy little head (or tail, can't quite tell what ends I was trying to lop off!), and for my own sanity, until I can get technical info from Princeton Graphics on any eeprom in the monitor, and also any "soft" permanent memory on my graphics card, I'll live with the spy in my machine.
What really hurts is that all my cherished mail was destroyed in the worm wars of August, and with the volume I used to receive, I'm now reduced to short term memory as far as personalities and subjects are concerned, so if you're one of the brave ones still willing to email me and I seem to suffer from e-altzhiemers disease, bear with me, repeat yourself, ask me what I'm talking about if you get confused with someone else, and in short, treat my like a doddering old fool that needs help, cause that's how I feel about now.
ANYway, being off the net for a week would have drove me nuts if I hadn't invested the time in constructing a goodly number of plaster molds and wax pieces for building several GIT versions, and given my perfectionist tendancies, I'm still building molds to make sure that when I start casting lead and iron filled resin orbitals, I can keep going with the less than perfect molds If I break or severely scar the best molds until enough are made.
I'm making solid double conic orbitals starting with straight funnels as a basis for the multilayered shapes, the lead will be cast in molds made from the outsides of 4 oz (water volume) funnels, and should be close to 4 and some pounds of lead, sheathed with iron dust filled resin concentrically cast around the lead with 8 oz plastic funnels making the resin containers, half cast at a time.
"Hollow" double conics will use the same shapes but the lead will be a ring about the greatest diameter (giving me a bit of trouble, but I'm getting there), and expand in place foam will fill wax soaked molds to hold the lead centered in the larger funnels for the resin/iron casting (the outside of the small funnel spout, when trimmed to 1/2 inch long is a good fit for the inside of the larger funnel's spout).
I'm using Arrow Plastic Mfg. Co., Elk Grove IL item #00122 (8 oz), and the 4 oz item of similar shape, for those that may want to get started before I can get the particulars on the site. I got mine at High School Pharmacy, possibly you may have one in your area, and you'll want to look at several that have perfectly flat tops, the white ones seem to me more regular.
I'm photographing the process as I go along, and in the process of making over 10 copies of the inner cone (2 plain solid lead sets and 3 waxed foam casting sets for the lead ring version), I've now gotten rather good at the perfect plaster mix amount, and those notes are being gathered as well.
I'm seriously considering doing a copyrighted booklet to help me defray some of the expense I'm racking up, with enough information detailed in a step by step manner for those that don't like to ruin as much material in trials as I am, but I will release enough on the site for those more adventurous and familiar with materials handling to do your own.
This version will have 3.75 inch diameter orbitals (3 1/4" max lead diameter, 1/4" resin/iron dust cladding), 6 inches from truncated tip to tip, and use a 30 inch bicycle tire as the drive wheel, and "should" develop enough thrust to at least do a good job of pushing a canoe around our local resevoir. That's the plan anyway.
I've got a lot of mail to answer (I FINALLY got the mail to work again!) and If I've missed responding to you, please write again (if you dare!), and if you could include past mail that I will have lost in the body of the letter, I won't be so much in the dark.
One man is champing at the bit to tell me some exciting news that he doesn't want eavsdroppers to listen in on, and I've had to tell him to send it snail mail since I can't trust email anymore, and curiosity can really make me want to throw caution to the wind at times, but lucky me I'm getting older and "slightly" wiser these days, and we'll all just have to wait. Now if I could only remember our past mailings!
One writer sent out a warning of a rather vicious mail virus bomb traveling the net with "PENPAL GREETINGS!" as a subject title that eats virus software for breakfast, then uses your mail files as it's own nasty little chain letter to launch attacks at everyone in your mail box listings, while at the same time wiping your hard drives. I haven't received such a gift (knock on my desktop), but the warning is to just dump it, don't open it.
Sometimes I REALLY wonder how this sort of stuff is possible, and frankly wouldn't believe it if I hadn't had my own battles with the worm, and at least this one was created by intelligent critters gathering information, rather than just plain destructive, some consolation I guess, but then I did watch an autoexec.bat file apear on a blank d: drive yesterday with " ;format " as it's only line, perhaps as a warning not to tamper with the bug! The "empty trash" button was greyed out, not allowing me to even empty the thing!
Have you ever tried to recycle the recycling bin? I know I could get into the registry and mess with the settings to delete without storing, but I have enough trouble just getting things to work with the setup wizards, and I'm a bit shy now of wanting to tackle the worm again! With the 30 day trial of McAfee AV running full tilt, the worm goes where it pleases with nary an alarm even!
If you noticed my index has now gone from early dawn to midnight black, then you'll know how I feel, it is intentional, and the cute "badvirus" graphic from Lawrence Ellul's Webmaster's Animated Gif site is not anywhere NEAR demonic enough to represent the worm, but the idea is there, and it's not that far-fetched an idea. Rosalie told me there are bad people on the net with warped values that can be just plain painful to run into, and now I believe her!
I've been a BIT late with this update, and will probably be late with the next until I have a much more joyous news to share with you. If you believe in such things, send a black prayer to virus and worm programmers everywhere, let them taste their own bilious mean spirit!
OOF! It takes a lot to get me down, I've been through more than that, and my restraint from using choice words is remarkable if I do say so myself!
4:15 pm Wednesday 20 August 1997
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