[LUAU] Does this shock you?

[R. Scott Belford]

I have been meaning to email LUAU and our announce list for some time to 
make sure that we all knew the recent news about HOSEF.  We have a 
permanent home at UH thanks to many unthanked people, and luau and 
monmotha have a permanent home with HOSEF.  We have set up a lab this 
year at Kuhio Elementary, we had a booth at the eSchool conference, and 
we have donated a lab to the Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii in Ewa Beach 
where we refurbish the computers that are later donated to other 
organizations.  We just put a Mandrake Box at the Makiki Community Library.

There is so much news, and I will share it soon.  For now, I want to 
shock you, if I can.

There are two computer labs at the BGCH.  The downstairs one, a windows 
lab, was donated by the Case Foundation and was supported for the first 
few years.  Upstairs is our 15 station Linux thin client lab.  We have 
also donated two stand-alone Mandrake boxes now in heavy use by MGMT.

The downstairs windows lab has fallen in disrepair.  No windows updates 
and no IE patches have made this lab an unsurfable nightmare on some 
computers.  It is no longer even possible to run Windows Update on the 
ones that I have tried.  It is not the staff's fault, support is now 
handled by the company of one the members of the BOD.  A quick look at 
the Task Manager and some time googling has revealed the following on 
just *one* computer.


CTFMON.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/spyware.familykeylog.html

FF.EXE
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.hllw.rirc.html

WSup.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.huntbar.html

WToolsA.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.huntbar.html

msbb.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.ncase.html

wupdater.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.hllw.polybot.html

CMESys.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/dialer.iedisco.html

WKufind.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.hllw.gaobot.ee.html

VPTray.exe
proof that norton is uninstalled

mspmspsv.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.hllw.gaobot.ee.html

WToolsS.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.huntbar.html

regsvc.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/backdoor.irc.cloner.html

lsass.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sasser.b.worm.html

csrss.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.dalbug.worm.html

smss.exe
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.dalbug.worm.html


If you are still wondering if Linux can replace Windows on the Desktop, 
I can assure that it can, it has, it does, and in cases like this, it 
must.  I'll be documenting this in a case study, but for now I had to 
share this horror with someone else.

--scott