Objology

I'm a Mac user. I make no qualms about it. I do my best to play the part. This includes being smug about my platform. Very smug. "Lay" people always want me to help them with their windows machine because I am a great "wizard" of computers. I just tilt my nose and say "ya know... if you had a Mac..." I especially like pointing out to people at work how slick my Mac works on their otherwise very Windows environment. Yeah. I'm a bigot.

So it was with a year's worth of chagrin that I discovered yesterday that my machine got hacked while on the company network. My mouse started moving around. It wandered over to Mail, and read one or two of my mails. I was still in shock at this point. My first thought, was that I left a VNC running. We use it quite regularly at work, but I usually turn it on, on an as needed basis on my desktop. I headed over to Colloquy and asked fellow workers via IRC if they were messing with my desktop. Nope. Now I'm getting alarmed, this user is still wandering around looking at things.

Time to go looking at SystemPreferences. Apple menu... System Preferences. Hey!! They closed it!! Three more tries, they keep closing it!!!! They know what I'm doing and are fighting me. Back up in consternation for a minute. They go back to looking at my email. Seems they're happy. I've got to do something though. My boss walks in and wonders what's going on. This is exciting. This does not look good for me though. All that bragging about how putting my Mac on the company network is going down the toilet at well over 1.6 GPM. I've got to do something!!

Quick. Check Safari. Google "Mac OS X Desktop Exploits." Nothing really. Wait. They're moving the mouse again. They picked a link. No this doesn't look like anything. They hit the back button. They're following another one!! They are so messing with me!! If this is a "prank" I will kill one of my coworkers.

I pulled the ethernet cable out. No affect. What the heck is going on here???? Go to SystemPreferences. Good, got it open this time. Look at sharing. Shut down ssh. Firewall is still running. Mouse still moving sometimes. Getting very pannicky now.

Oh yeah, that's right, I've got wireless access as well. Better turn that off. I've got that in the menu bar. Go to turn it off. Hey!! They moved the mouse. Try again. Same thing!! They know!! They know if I get this disconnected, they won't be able to own me. Keep trying. If this doesn't work quick, I'm killing power. They keep fighting me for control of that menu. Ahhahh!! Got it!! I got you!! Whoever you are!! Mouse pointer is at rest now.

That must have been it. Time to lean back, slow heart rate down. This is NOT good. At all. Take breath, think this through logically. Slowly. 2 minutes. Yep that was it. WHAT??!!!!?? IT MOVED AGAIN!!!! Hysteria, I know thee, and thy name is Mac bigotry humbled.

Someone got access to my machine and installed a virus (yeah I know, that's probably not the right term technically speaking. I am aware that there's genus of computer infection classification, but I just like calling them all viruses, OK?). Stress and Disappointment are congealed at this point. What am I gonna do? There's an exploit in the wild. I'm on the "early adopter" side, because I can't find anything on the net about it yet. Time for a reboot.

Cycled power. This will take a minute. Get up and walk around. Maybe it's an electronic thing? I've been working in the lab. There's probably 20 machines running in there, enough RF in there to keep SETI happy for at least a month. Walk through the cubes outside the lab. Nothing untowards.

Machine comes back up. Looks good. 3 minutes later, the mouse moves again. Just a little bit. I hit the ceiling. But it's not being as bad as last time. Just little flickers. The virus must be on time delay or something and runs at startup time, or something.

At this point, I looked the Semi's lights full on and realized "stupidity I know thee well." I have a wireless USB mouse!! Quick dash through the cubicles. Hmm... weird. No one else has a USB mouse. I so thought I had it. Look through the window of the door in the conference room. Lots of big wigs in there. Heightens my sense of paranoia. This is not going to be good for me. My boss is in there, sees me. Ducks out. "Did you figure out what's wrong? Carmen (our secretary) is having all kinds of problems with her computer too." I look in. Trying not interrupt the meeting with high brass, but got to see....

Carmen has a mouse. A wireless USB mouse. Same as mine. She's trying to give a powerpoint presentation and it's not going well. Her computer backs up to the wall, the same wall I'm on the other side of in the lab. Quick experiment confirms that's it. Crisis over.

Maybe us high-n-mighty Mac users should be grateful that they allowed us even one button on our mouses.

It was fun to uncover the details after the fact. It turns out that Apple...System Preferences menu is about the same place as File ... Open in powerpoint. Double clicking on files in the file manager are at about the same time as a Safari link is. How she managed to get the clicks just right and be fighting hers at the same time was all a comedy of coincidences. It's amazing how the mind can be conditioned to look for and find conspiracies that are not there.