Alora Fane

My website was infected with malware, and it took two days to fix! Very annoying. I'm also having some general computer issues, though I don't know enough about the non-creative aspects of computers to know what's going on. Do you have any ideas??

I was feeling really good on Sunday night because I'd managed to push through my procrastination and anxiety to reply to a few comments I'd been meaning to get around to, and I even managed to send messages out to four people from my past who I feared I'd burned bridges with in my madness a couple of years ago. I didn't expect three of the four to reply (since I thought they probably hate me anyway, O woe! and so on), but surprisingly all but one has replied! Already I'm feeling a sense of relief that either things weren't as bad as I negatively assumed, or that I've had a chance to explain myself and make peace. It's a shame about the other one since that's the one I was most hoping to lead to something, but maybe the wounds are just still too fresh and sore. It's a shame that even if I can mostly recover from the literal cancer in my brain, the effects it had on my connections - or at least this one - are more enduring.

So I was feeling (mostly) good about that, eager to start the new week with a cleared mind and fresh enthusiasm for the MARDEK Re-release... but, of course, I woke up to see that my website had been branded with a big red "THIS SITE IS DANGEROUS AND TRYING TO STEAL YOUR INFORMATION!!!" warning, and its folders were infested with foreign files.

SIIIIIIGH.

It's hardly the first time something like this has happened; I suppose it's just part of the territory when you run a website. It still hits hard though, fills me with stress and anxiety which takes a while to calm down.

From what I could tell, it was malicious 'phishing' code, which doesn't infect users' computers exactly, but it just sets up a fake imitation website (I'm assuming from the folder name that this one was imitating Netflix), where it fools gullible people into giving their account or credit card details. The traffic to this site is so small - and I'm assuming visitors are generally tech-savvy and young rather than elderly technophobes - that I can't imagine it worked on anyone, plus I think I cleared out the unwanted files quickly (definitely in less than ~8 hours), so hopefully the actual infection wasn't serious. To be clear, since I know it can be scary, simply viewing the red warning wouldn't have been dangerous at all; the whole point of it is to protect against infection. And even if you'd seen the infected site, you would have had to deliberately type in your details for it to be damaging to you.

My biggest fear with things like this is that it's the handiwork of some person whose demons have locked their sights on me specifically due to something they perceive me as having done to them (eg "you aren't making MARDEK 4, this has ruined my life, I will now ruin yours"). It wouldn't be the first time, and there's always this undercurrent of dangerous madness when attracting an audience of strangers. In this case, though, I think it was more of a 'drive-by' infection, which was most likely a bot just heartlessly using my computer as a host to leech money back to the malware creators, rather than something intended to take me down in a specific personal way. So hopefully this is the end of it for now.

I spent a big, stressful chunk of both Monday and Tuesday talking with my webhost's customer support about it, which resulted in installing something which I really should have had before, which should protect the site against malware in future. It cost money though, which isn't great since it's not like I have any.

More of an issue though was that red warning screen that Google placed on the site. You have to apply manually to Google to have your website reviewed and this removed, but that took a while, and I had to talk on some support forum thing for hours to ensure I was doing it all correctly. Annoying, but at least someone did help out, which I appreciate.

So that's fixed now... though the whole thing's very much shaken up my plans for this week. I need to get back to the MARDEK Re-release, so hopefully I'll be able to get into the right state of mind for that at some point today.

I also noticed while trying to fix the website stuff that I was having strange internet issues, and I don't know if they were related. Maybe my computer had been infected with some malware, somehow, and that's how it got into my site's files? I must have run MalwareBytes over a dozen times, and the first time it did find around 15 ∞ PUP.Optional.PushNotifications ∞, which seem annoying but not exactly harmful, and, more worryingly, one instance of ∞ Malware.Generic ∞, which is unclassified malware. That seems to have been in one of the Oculus folders, and some googling suggests it might be a false positive? Nothing that seems like it'd have anything to do with the issues I was experiencing though.

I was also having similar issues on my phone, so maybe it was something to do with heavy internet load due to the transition from the weekend to the still-working-from-home Monday? It was a bank holiday though, so maybe loads of people were just streaming Netflix etc? Or maybe it was deliberate throttling in anticipation of extra internet load?

Either way, it's working fine now, though when it was affecting my computer, restarting it seemed to make a difference, bizarrely. Essentially the issue was that when I tried to load any site (even google.com), it'd hang for a few seconds before either (unreliably) eventually loading, or it'd just give constant "this page is taking a long time to load, do you want to wait or quit?" messages. Restarting the computer seemed to fix it so that websites loaded as quickly as they used to, for a few minutes at least, though just restarting the browser or disconnecting and reconnecting didn't have the same effect. Odd.

There's another computer problem that I've noticed a few times over the past few weeks, though it was more apparent during this because I restarted far more than usual. About half the time - maybe less - when I turn on my computer, it shows the very first white text on black background screens, but then just goes to a black screen and hangs there. I've left it for several minutes, and it just never progresses beyond that. The computer still makes noises, though. I have to hold down the power button to do a hard shutdown, after which turning it on again has it progress to the windows login screen as normal. I also noticed that the same thing happened during one of the shutdown attempts; it mostly shut down, but hung on a black screen for several minutes without the power actually going off.

Computers are my life, but I've never had the mind of a mechanic; I just use them as tools to create art, but I have little idea about the ins-and-outs of how they function. I wonder how many artists could make their own paintbrush (or digital tablet), how many pianists could fix a piano! I know some of you are more tech-savvy than I am, though, so I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about what any of this could be!

I've been wondering whether I just need a new computer in general. This one feels like it's getting bloated and slow, since I use it for all kinds of different purposes all day every day (programming, game dev, 3D modelling, music composition, gaming, art, etc; not just browsing, gaming, and checking emails). I've had it since maybe December 2017, I think? I remember asking people on this blog about which one I should get. Obviously computers aren't cheap though so I wouldn't spend a ton of money on a new one if it's not really necessary. I don't know if a new one would be significantly better than what I'm already using. Maybe I'll keep thinking about it.

How often do you think you should upgrade a computer if you use it heavily for development stuff? How much have (affordable) computers even improved in the past couple of years?

7 COMMENTS

MontyCallay101~5Y

I'm sorry that you had to deal with all of this website business on top of everything else! I hope you'll take some time to rest now :)

But I would be surprised if you had to buy a new computer already, even if you use it heavily for development stuff! The two scenarios in which that would make sense to me were if 1) some significant part of the hardware (motherboard/CPU) was damaged or broken, which seems unlikely given that your machine is only about two years old, or 2) if some part of your setup was starting to bottleneck your work and you can't easily replace it. A way you could go about checking into 2) could be having the task manager open while you do some of your work and seeing if any one thing is fully occupied (e.g. your CPU/disk drive/GPU being under full load etc.) that seems to be causing a slowdown.

In terms of trying to eliminate 1), it's a good idea to make sure you aren't facing software issues before buying a new machine, since it's usually easier to resolve software problems! In my experience, one of the easier things you can do that often makes a significant difference is resetting your operating system, which has become incredibly easy in Windows 10 (Settings -> Update and Security -> Recovery -> Reset this PC), which basically reinstalls your operating system. It's a good idea to do this at least every few years or when you are starting to experience "strange" errors or slowdowns like the ones you are describing, since bloat does build up over the time that you use it. You'd have to back up your files, of course, if you don't already do that, since depending on which option you choose ([LINK] ), it will of course remove all of your apps/settings/documents. Still, far preferable to having to buy a new machine!

Most often, the reason why PCs get slower over time is due to software bloat, not hardware issues. The PCs my family and I use (some of which I built, some of which we bought), for example, have usually lasted upwards of five years. Again, the cases in which I think you should buy a new one are if 1) you've tried to eliminate everything but something is clearly broken on the hardware level, or 2) if you've realised that your work has become so computationally demanding that your hardware can't keep up with it.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask - this is mostly my experience from years of using and tinkering with PCs.

I'm sorry that you had to deal with all of this website business on top of everything else! I hope you'll take some time to rest now :)

But I would be surprised if you had to buy a new computer already, even if you use it heavily for development stuff! The two scenarios in which that would make sense to me were if 1) some significant part of the hardware (motherboard/CPU) was damaged or broken, which seems unlikely given that your machine is only about two years old, or 2) if some part of your setup was starting to bottleneck your work and you can't easily replace it. A way you could go about checking into 2) could be having the task manager open while you do some of your work and seeing if any one thing is fully occupied (e.g. your CPU/disk drive/GPU being under full load etc.) that seems to be causing a slowdown.

In terms of trying to eliminate 1), it's a good idea to make sure you aren't facing software issues before buying a new machine, since it's usually easier to resolve software problems! In my experience, one of the easier things you can do that often makes a significant difference is resetting your operating system, which has become incredibly easy in Windows 10 (Settings -> Update and Security -> Recovery -> Reset this PC), which basically reinstalls your operating system. It's a good idea to do this at least every few years or when you are starting to experience "strange" errors or slowdowns like the ones you are describing, since bloat does build up over the time that you use it. You'd have to back up your files, of course, if you don't already do that, since depending on which option you choose (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12415 ), it will of course remove all of your apps/settings/documents. Still, far preferable to having to buy a new machine!

Most often, the reason why PCs get slower over time is due to software bloat, not hardware issues. The PCs my family and I use (some of which I built, some of which we bought), for example, have usually lasted upwards of five years. Again, the cases in which I think you should buy a new one are if 1) you've tried to eliminate everything but something is clearly broken on the hardware level, or 2) if you've realised that your work has become so computationally demanding that your hardware can't keep up with it.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask -  this is mostly my experience from years of using and tinkering with PCs.

Astreon152~5Y

Every time i read your messages about that phishing hack, i can't help but think it's a positive thing: doesn't that mean you've been identified as generating so much interest on the internet that by usurping your website, the phisher would make significant money ?

Imagine what will happen when it's not a scam and you release the new game !

See, isn't it all very reassuring after all ? :)

Tobias 1115~5Y

I'd be surprised if my specific site was targetted at all; chances are this was the equivalent of getting spam emails, simply because some bot added your address to a list. I assume they try to target as many sites as they can, rather than just the ones they expect to profit from!

But thanks for trying to see the good side of it!

Honestly I'm dreading becoming more popular because it probably will mean more stuff like this...

Spectre35~5Y

Bought a low end ROG laptop in 2016. I was a uni student, the main use of this laptop is to game, research, write papers, watch videos and browsing (with lots of tabs opening at the same time). Didn't use it for much app development tho. I still considered myself a heavy user because I usually had it on for more than 15 hours a day and it barely got any rest in the waking hours.

Now, my laptop needs 2-3 tries to boot up successfully, has glitches here and there and couldn't sustain a game for long, otherwise it will overheat and shutdown automatically. Guess I'll use it until it officially dies.

vladandrei199647~5Y

Glad to hear this got fixed, I've been following this on Twitter.

If you think about getting a new PC, I've built mine last year and I must say you can build a pretty good one for cheap. Get a Ryzen processor first of all (Intel is way overpriced now for the low performance). I've got a Ryzen 3600 for about 150$ that has 6 cores at 3.6ghz with 12 threads. You can't get anything from Intel on that price and performance.
Otherwise, if you don't already have an SSD, buy one and install your operating system on it, it will be way faster.

Can't wait for your re-release and new game, but don't overpush yourself. Good luck!

Ptyrell37~5Y

Wow, crazy to read about all that happens with a malware attack! Glad you waded through.

I'll echo the sentiment to build your own computer, if you decide you need a new one in the future. It is a lot cheaper, teaches you a lot about computers, and allows you to build exactly the type of computer that fits your needs. It really isn't that hard honestly, it just seems like it should be. But really it is just putting together 10-15 pieces in the slots they are meant to go in. Most anyone who has built Ikea furniture and has access to youtube can probably do it.