New AIM Bot: vidAIM.a

I’ve stopped dissecting malware for a while (no time– I’ve got a life now), but this one has been running wild for about a week and infecting many of my friends. It seems to run in my social circle (this would make an interesting study; how do bots perpetuate in online social circles?)

C’mon. This is proof I’d do really well working at Symantec, you know? Read more of this post to see how I reverse engineered the bot in under 30 minutes.

To Clean

1. Boot Windows into safe mode and do not run anything.
2. Carefully go into “C:\Windows” and remove the “tmpie” folder which contains the payload.
3. Optionally remove the registry key “HKLM,”Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run”,”iexplorer”,0,”%10%\tmpie\iexplorer.exe”"
4. Reboot into normal mode.
5. Change AIM password as well as all social networking passwords.
6. Stop downloading shit like this. Check to make sure the domain is real before you click. Yep, take a second or two to actually look at the URL bar in your browser. Won’t hurt you.

Technology and Humanity

I propose a question:

If it is in our nature to embrace technology and grow, yet it is also our nature as human beings to return to humanity and thus further humanizing our life, where do we find balence?

I often get a sickening feeling in my stomach when I think about humans becoming technology, and technology becoming humans. It is a scary and almost taboo topic in its nature. Yet I still work with computers on a daily basis and I still use technology to better my life experience; my relationships, my work, my seeking of knowledge. This leaves me in a state of confusion, as if I can not even begin to comprehend this matter at all.

Where do you find balence?

Is Being Influencial Ethical?

Influence, in a truly ideal form, is positive influence. It is not manipulation and is not “weird” or “unethical”. The mind rejects negatives; you can not influence with negativity. This is manipulative and is known as deception, for one must present a positive path with an obscured harmful destination. A lure, if you will. If the path stays positive and the destination is positive, influence is indeed influence and thus ethical.

Let us use our powers of influence to better the world.

Differences

There are millions upon millions of differences that separate us in this world.

Differences

We were all born with different genetic codes that determined our eye color, hair color, skin color, size, and countless other features.

We are of different backgrounds, which gives us our culture.

We speak different languages, which determines who we can or can’t communicate with.

We are exposed to different hardships, which leaves us with different struggles.

We grew up with different parents, who passed down their rituals to us.

We grew up with different friends who gave us our childhood memories.

We have different positions in society, each giving us a specific role.

We have different passions, leaving us with expectations of what we want life to mean and be for us.

We have different hobbies, which determine what we do with our free time.

We have different strengths and weaknesses, which gives us our abilities to do things well and others not.

We have different opinions, which can cause great arguments and void of understanding.

We have different preferences of our ideal partner, which determine who we will seek for in life.

We have different needs, which cause us to seek after different resources.

We have different focuses, which determine what we will pay great thought to and others not.

We have differences.

Yet we can still experience beautiful, long-lasting relationships

And communicate endlessly with others,

Excellently.

Merry Christmas!

A very merry Christmas wish from Dreaming of Hex!

Our World is Changing, Can You Keep Up?

Our world is changing. Never have we seen such rapid development in all industries and functions of life. Technology, which fundamentally grows at an exponential rate due to its very nature of returns (see here), has sent society as a whole into a frenzy of development. And I’m not just talking about computer software.

There seems to be a piece of the human nature code that causes us to keep exploring, expanding, building, and tearing down. This would seem  economically, socially, and evolutionarily sound, and this is especially so if we look at what history has to show us about the development of the human species. However, we’re entering an age where the amount of information available to us is truly overwhelming.

How the hell do we keep up? Seriously, how? Almost everyday there’s a new software, a new development, a new tech. start-up, a new product, a new change. Trying to crunch everything into our brains simply isn’t efficient. And for many of us, all this information interferes with our goals. It’s just too overwhelming. Where do we go next? What area do we seek next in life? Where is the next potential of success hiding?

As life gets more complicated because of the information we’re producing more and more of, I think it is our jobs as human beings to stay increasingly simple in our nature. I don’t mean to tell you to push away the latest technological advancements; this would be impractical and very harmful to our success. What I am getting at here is keeping our focus simple. Really ask your self “what do I want from this world?” and “how do I get it?” The world has a lot to offer and you need to be able to sort through all the noise to get to it.

Success

I’ve been pondering success lately. What does success mean? We sure know what the opposite of success means, and we as human beings generally tend to think more about what we call “failure” then success.

Success, to many, is simply meeting our goals. It’s having some sort of concept of what we want to do with our time and efforts and getting an outcome that makes us happy. Yet time and time again, we don’t reach our goals and we’re left with a feeling of unaccomplishment; of complete and total failure.

Here’s how I break down success.

1. Knowing what you want

This is probably the toughest part of success. You can’t accomplish something and obtain success in anything unless you have something to obtain that isn’t in your posession. This is a circumstance that you’ve become consciously aware of that you wish to change. To change this circumstance we, as human beings, use our conscious and unconscious mind to guide our actions. Through our actions, be it communication or physical acts of exertion, we influence the world around us how we like hoping to get what we like returned. This should be stated positively; that is, what one wants to happen rather then does not want to happen. This is because the mind at it’s lowest fundamental levels does not understand negative commands.

2. Knowing when you’ve got it

This is the second hardest and most crucial part of success; knowing when you’ve got it. Many people set their goals and achieve what they had in mind. Yet over time, their goals may change or they may never even realize they’ve met their goals. This, then, involves the art of acute sensory. One must take careful detail of what sensory input they are obtaining and link it back to the goal they are tackling, always asking “what have I got?” and “what are my goals?”

3. Having the ability to change until you’ve got it

This is the last step of the success equation. It involves being flexible and accepting the fact that you may need to try many times to get what you want. Only once this truth is accepted can one keep trying with the same or even greater motivation that existed in the beginning. In fact, this here is a key motivational strategy. If it is not, every single one of us will eventually feel the emotional impact of what we call “failure”. So then, remember that this “failure” is nothing more then the very sensory input we talked about in step 2. One must then take a step back from the problem at hand, recollect the thoughts, and set out again cycling through steps 2 and 3 until success is obtained.

Working with this break down of success, one can achieve anything. This is especially relavent in our world, where as both technological and human networking develops so does our ability to obtain the resources we need to succeed.

Hello world!

Hello world!

I’m actually going to keep the little default post that WordPress throws in there. Why do they do they include it in default installations? It always gets deleted… Until now.

Anyhow, if you want to know more about me check out the “About Me” page. I’m basically the hybrid of a kid who grew up always wondering how shit worked and a well-rounded, pretty average guy residing in New York City who enjoys sports and people.

Happy holidays everybody!