You are startled out of sleep. You jerk upright, momentarily unable to recall who or where you are. Blinking, your eyes slowly adjust to the dim light of your room. What woke you? A dream? A sound? The only thing you notice is a faint blue light spreading like mist across the carpet from beneath your door.

You cautiously open the door, and, shuffling toward the hall, your senses slowly return as you shake off sleep. There had been a sound, and now this inexplicable light. As your eyes continue to adjust, you strain to avoid obstacles in the hall. Following the wall, moving closer to the source of the malevolent glow, your mind reaches out to assess the possibilities of this encounter. Is there real danger here? Should you go back? Undaunted, you continue.

It is there, on the desk. Heart pounding, mouth dry, reaching for something to hold for support, you recognize both the source of the luminescence and of your discontent. Could it be? No! You scream first inside your head, then uncontrollable, the words escape and assault the silence of the darkened room. It can't be! No! The BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!

It's . . .your computer?!? BWAAAHAHAHAHAH!!

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That's right, folks. It's Halloween, and one newsletter per year I am allowed to be as corny and derivative as I want. This month I'll go over some common computer questions we are asked and give some helpful tips and information, most of which happen to fit in nicely with the current season and it's related pagan holidays. So bear with me and get your salt shaker, because you will need a grain or two to get through this month's article.

For maximum spookiness, read while listening to "Hall of the Mountain King", Scary Sound Effects or Michael Bolton.

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Zombies are out there . . .

The internet is full of zombies. And believe it or not, your computer might be one of them.

A zombie computer is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a computer virus, or a trojan infection. Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a "botnet", and is used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction. Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their systems are being used in this way.

Zombies have been used extensively to send e-mail spam; as of 2005, an estimated 50-80% of all spam worldwide was sent by zombie computers. This allows spammers to avoid detection. This spam also greatly furthers the spread of Trojan horses; as Trojans, they are not self-replicating.

Scary? It gets worse. What would happen if the "bad guys" put some software on your computer that uses a portion of its processing power in concert with many other "zombie" computers, essentially creating a supercomputer that can be harnessed for nefarious purposes?

InformationWeek reported on the "Storm worm botnet," a network of an estimated 2 million zombie computers.

How powerful could this type of "botnet" become? One expert quoted in InformationWeek estimates it could have more computing power than the top 500 supercomputers combined. One expert suspects that a group of zombies could contain as many as 50 million zombie computers. If your PC has been running a bit slow lately, it might be one of them.

Fortunately, like real zombies, zombie computers are fairly easy to spot. Just make sure you have a good antivirus installed and that it is kept up to date, and you can keep your own mild-mannered computer from becoming a member of the living dead.

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Protect Yourself From Vampires

"Going Green" is probably the hottest "buzzword" flying around the media right now. ( By the way, don't you think it's ironic that "buzzword" is, in itself, a "buzzword?) Saving money on electric and energy costs is a great idea, but most people overlook one of the most costly deficiencies on our power management plans. You can save money on your electricity bill by "vampire proofing" your electronic devices.

Phantom loads, often called standby loads or vampire loads is the electricity that devices in our homes and offices continue to draw even when their switches are in the off position. When it comes to home electronics, the Department Of Energy estimates that "Vampire Loads" account for fully seventy percent of home electricity use. View This Chart to see how much money could be wasted in your home or office over the course of a year.

Root out it's Lair. How do you find out which devices are to blame? One way is to use a power monitoring device such as a "Kill A Watt". Costing about $20, the Kill A Watt measures how much energy an appliance or electronic product is using when it is off or on. Check each appliance in your home. This includes major appliances in the off position, such as washers, microwaves and TV's. Write the power use of each one down on a piece of paper.

When you are done, add up the power use that is shown when a device is in the off position. Multiply the number by 24 and divide by 1000 to get the total killowatt hours per day lost to Vampire loads. then multiply this number by the price per kilawatt hour and see how much you could be saving.

Drive a stake in Vampire loads. Forget the garlic and holy water. Just like Dracula can't come in unless he is invited, we can make Vampire loads feel less at home by being sure that all high drain devices (like plasma tv's, game consoles, computers, laptops and especially laser printers) are connected to a battery backup or UPS. Uninterruptible Power Supplies will eliminate vampire loads and save you money, as well as protect the device from lightning or spike damage that could come in over your electrical lines.

Regular "Power Strips" will help if they are turned off when the devices are not in use, but a UPS will guarantee that no current is being leeched without your full consent.

The addition of a good Battery Backup or UPS will pay for itself well within the first year. If you have tv's or devices that don't receive much use, unplug them. Keeping rarely used devices unplugged will save even more money on your monthly electricity bill.

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The Fear of the Unknown . . . and Why it's Good

It seems like I spend a lot of time trying to convince my boys not to be afraid of things. Don't be afraid of the dark. There are no such things as monsters. That girl won't hurt you. But when it comes to computers and data security, I want people to be scared.

Computer guys worry about other people's data for a living. It comes with the territory. But so many people, not realizing how much they depend on their computers - their email, their company data, their customer's data - are fearless when it comes to working without a net.

Worry about your network security. Be paranoid about backing up your data. Have a Disaster Recovery Plan.

Consider the following statistics:

31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control.
34% of companies fail to test their tape backups, and of those that do, 77% have found tape back-up failures.
60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster.
93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster.

If you store customer or employee data, make sure you have a strong firewall and that it is being checked for intrusion attempts.

Stop for a minute and think about what you would be losing if you really lost all of your data. Contacts, pictures, client info, past invoices, financial info, medical information.

Files from Beyond the Grave

This is one of the most common questions that we are asked, and I wanted to take the opportunity to give you some information on recovering lost data.

Let's say you are looking up your recipe for "Uncle Fester's Ghoulish Party Punch" and you accidentally delete the file. It goes into the recycle bin, and somehow, against all odds, inconceivably, you click on "Empty Recycle Bin" rather than "Restore File." How could this happen? I can't answer, but I can say I've seen it more than once. Can the expired file be exhumed from the cold, cold ground? Most of the time the answer is yes.

When a file is on a storage device, like a hard drive, there is a section of the drive that contains a "File Table." This table contains the information for each of the files on the volume. Not the file itself, but information about the file, like how large it is, when it was last written to or modified, and where it is located on the disk. When you delete a file, it doesn't actually erase the section of the disk where that file was stored. Instead, it changes the File Table to tell the computer that the location where the file used to be is now empty. It isn't empty, but the computer thinks it is because the File Table says so.

At this point, you could run a program like Free Undelete or Recuva and get the file back in its entirety, just as if you never lost your faculties and deleted it in the first place.

Time is of the essence though, because the longer you wait, the more likely the location where the file actually is, which has been marked as empty, will be overwritten by another file. Once this happens, it is much more difficult to recover the file and can be impossible in some cases. You could, for example, overwrite the file you are trying to recover by installing the recovery software. (See, more irony!)

What if you want to delete data so it can't ever be recovered? For example, if you are donating your computer or recycling, chances are you don't want your family tree or information detailing your subscription to "Marionette Weekly" falling into the hands of some unpolished computer vendor who wouldn't appreciate the intricacies of modern puppetry.

In this case, download a program like KILLDISK, boot from a cd or floppy and run a command or two. This takes several hours, depending on the size of your drive, but when finished, your hard drive will be scrubbed clean and only the pentagon would have a chance of recovering Granny's secret Butterscotch Delight recipe.

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Well, you made it this far, and although it may have seemed like a haunted house where you couldn't find the door, you are almost out. I love all things scary and enjoy stepping out of my comfort zone for a good scare. Enjoy your Halloween, and thanks for indulging me.

Wait, WHAT'S THAT BEHIND YOU??

Just kidding!

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For information on any of the information in this month's newsletter, please call Available Technology at 864.232.1234