Red Herrings

When one's computer is routinely hacked -- even though I still can't "prove" that it was -- one starts to think it's a personal vendetta at work, not a random act. It seems clear to me that the person or persons who perpetrated these attacks on me knew me; that they probably even had physical access to my computer. I have theories of how this was accomplished. So-called "social engineering" is the most probable: leaving an unmarked computer DVD for me to pop into my PC, unwittingly running a malware installer, for example. But the truth is, I still don't know when or how I was initially targeted (though I have some pretty good guesses as to why). If that's the case -- if a person is indeed "targeted" by a hacker, how can he be safe? Especially when both Windows and Mac computers come out-of-the-box essentially defenseless against such inrusions, with minimum security in place and, in the case of Windows (any variant), running a host of unneeded, security-reducing services by default.

Unfortunately, the paranoia such thoughts bring about are maddening. One sees "evidence" everywhere, signs pointing to one person or the other. Red herrings, as they call them in detective novels and movies. I've been led down several wrong paths, but have narrowed the list of suspects down to three serious ones. Each one has had opportunity (access to my machine), motive (let's just say I've made my share of enemies), and the amorality required to commit such an offense. I used to hang around with a group of people with let us say ... questionable scruples. What can I say, it's true: You lay down with dogs, you get fleas. But no one deserves to be put through what I've gone through. I plan in a later post to enumerate the direct and indirect costs -- such as time spent troubleshooting and reinstalling software -- this crap has cost me. I expect the figure to be astounding. I plan also on profiling (though not naming) each of these three Horsemen of the Apocalypse.