Important - Guestbook Infected

Location : Reading, England.

Sometime between GMT 12pm 26th January and GMT 4am 27th January 2006, the guestbook of this blog was compromised by a hacker. He/she/it infected the guestbook with a downloader trojan horse called SPLOIT[1].ANR that automatically downloads and installs itself onto your computer if you browsed the guestbook between those times. I'm very sorry if it has affected any of you guys and I hope you have an antivirus and firewall installed on your computer. If you don't, what...are you NUTS? Surfing the internet can be more dangerous than surfing ocean waves these days and you do NOT go roaming around the internet armed with only a naked operating system(like Windows XP). You need armour. Besides the operating system, you must also acquire antivirus software and a firewall. That sucks because it usually means you'll have to spend more on top of the operating system. Two years ago, I posted an entry about the necessary programs a PC computer should have installed(see below). Thankfully, there are still free ones available for home use.

I once installed a fresh copy of Windows XP, surfed the internet for 20 minutes and I was infected by approximately 50 various forms of malware, spyware, viruses, trojans, etc. Isn't it crazy? Maybe I was just wayyyy outta luck then but still, that felt like going for a naked stroll in the park and getting mugged, stabbed 50 times. So? I switched to Apple computers. After many years of frustrating blue PC screens, virus infections and almost contracting hernia(on me, not my PC), there has been a lot less stress since I started surfing the Net using my Apple iBook because there are hardly any viruses associated with Apple systems. Why? Because nobody really bothers creating a virus for an operating system that is installed in less than 10% of computers in the world. Plus, other advantages include having no extra software costs involved and I get to improve my skills in both PC and Apple platforms! Not to mention Apple computers are sooooo sexyyyy.... Heads turn whenever I pull out my 12" and they go "whooaaaa.....can I touch it?". Yeah, I meant the 12 inch screen size of my iBook!

The guestbook has now been removed so it's ok if you click on it now. I'm looking towards installing a new one in the future, when I can. But if you did visit my guestbook in the last 48 hours and you don't have any kind of PC security programs installed on your computer, I advice you to(at least) install the free antivirus software AVG and scan your computer. If you have the time, install all the programs I have listed in the past entry Useful Software.

Oh well, Gong Xi Fa Chai to the Chinese readers of this blog. Chinese New Year starts this coming Sunday. I hope all of us will have many things to bark about in the coming Year of the Dog 2006!