Yeah, I was pissed at that. Computer repairmen are about as unscrupulous as mechanics, it seems. I hope by "all equipment" they meant a new computer only, not the monitor and peripherals as well, but I kind of think they meant both? IDK, I worked on my college's IT for a couple years and the things students said that computer techs had told them their computers needed in order to be fixed...
There are some pretty noxious attacks out there where it can be easier to just get a new computer/hard drive, and wiping + restoring the drive is always easier than removing malware. But out-and-out disabling attacks where you must get new equipment? Extremely rare. I've heard of attacks on BIOS and firmware (although these are potentially no longer possible/internet legends?), and it's theoretically possible to physically destroy a chip by screwing around to make it overheat and fail (although again possibly internet legends?). But I highly doubt that's what happened here.
Some opportunistic jerk computer guy is taking advantage of this woman, who must be scared out of her mind already.
I wondered about that. I know there are lots of ways to get rid of malware. And if worst comes to worst, reformatting the hard drive would get rid of EVERYTHING, correct?
Of course, that would be a major pain in the ass, since you have to back up all your files beforehand, and then reinstall Windows plus all your applications and other files afterwards. But still a lot less painful than shelling out thousands of dollars for new equipment!
Methinks somebody wanted to make a few extra bucks. Methinks that somebody is in need of a good kick in the ass.
reformatting the hard drive would get rid of EVERYTHING, correct?
In the sense of malware? Yup, it should. In the sense of "I can now throw away a hard drive that once contained sensitive data," (which is not relevant here, but people may be interested in knowing), no, it doesn't. You can retrieve a surprising amount of data with the correct equipment, apparently. There's some DoD thing that deals with that by writing tons of crap data to a drive, reformating it, writing more crap data, etc... and that kills it past all hope of recovery.
(Again, I know this isn't terribly relevant, but it's very little known and quite interesting).
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There are some pretty noxious attacks out there where it can be easier to just get a new computer/hard drive, and wiping + restoring the drive is always easier than removing malware. But out-and-out disabling attacks where you must get new equipment? Extremely rare. I've heard of attacks on BIOS and firmware (although these are potentially no longer possible/internet legends?), and it's theoretically possible to physically destroy a chip by screwing around to make it overheat and fail (although again possibly internet legends?). But I highly doubt that's what happened here.
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I wondered about that. I know there are lots of ways to get rid of malware. And if worst comes to worst, reformatting the hard drive would get rid of EVERYTHING, correct?
Of course, that would be a major pain in the ass, since you have to back up all your files beforehand, and then reinstall Windows plus all your applications and other files afterwards. But still a lot less painful than shelling out thousands of dollars for new equipment!
Methinks somebody wanted to make a few extra bucks. Methinks that somebody is in need of a good kick in the ass.
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In the sense of malware? Yup, it should. In the sense of "I can now throw away a hard drive that once contained sensitive data," (which is not relevant here, but people may be interested in knowing), no, it doesn't. You can retrieve a surprising amount of data with the correct equipment, apparently. There's some DoD thing that deals with that by writing tons of crap data to a drive, reformating it, writing more crap data, etc... and that kills it past all hope of recovery.
(Again, I know this isn't terribly relevant, but it's very little known and quite interesting).
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In fact, the government initially classified PGP encryption as munitions.
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