Slight concern
Posted: Wed 21 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 3 Comments »OK, this is a geeky post par excellence, so if you’re not interested in geeky-type stuff, there’ll be a more normal post a bit later on. Otherwise, click on the more link…
Ah, you’re still here. OK, cool – bit of a question, as it’s not something I’ve come across before.
Over the weekend, we lost our broadband connection. At first I thought “Fucking NTL, down again – it’ll be back later though, I’m sure”. The next day it was more “Fucking NTL. If those cunts have cut us off, I’ll swing for ’em.”. But they’re closed on Sundays, for some godforsaken reason.
Anyway, finally got it sorted last night – and here’s where the question comes in. Somehow, all my networking connections had been changed to trying to get a fixed IP, rather than the DHCP they are normally set at. Now, I didn’t change them, Herself doesn’t know how to, and wouldn’t want to anyway.
So – is it possible to reset one’s TCP/IP settings to fixed IP remotely? Could it be a virus? I can’t see it being a trojan as a) my stuff’s paranoid anyway, and b) why would a hacker/trojan user want to destroy their own connection to my machine?
As it is, my stuff’s now in ultra-paranoid mode, and will inform me if any settings/defaults/etc. change. But I’m still intrigued about how/why this could happen…
EXACTLY the same thing happened to me once. I honestly can’t remember what caused it but I believe the final choices were a rogue website trying to do nasty things via some form of viral code or a recent software installation gone awry. It took pigging hours to diagnose but as you’ve found out yourself was relatively simple to rectify.
why would a hacker/trojan user want to destroy their own connection to my machine?
Your assumption here is that all hacker/trojan writers are competant enough to write code that doesn’t wreck its own chances of doing what it’s supposed to.
(my colleagues here in IT Support often seem rather dim about TCP/IP basics, things they *really* should know about for their job, so I don’t see why a trojan writer shouldn’t be too)
Fucking NTL. They are bastards. I Rang Customer Services and yes, once again the automessage said ‘sorry! our servers are down for maintainence’ (again). These cunts are always ‘down for maintainence’. Why fix something that works!!!! Anyway, as I was saying. Rang customer services and as usual, an Indina answerd from long distance so I could hardly hear him. All he did was repeat the automessage and then ask me the problem. Could hardly hear him but told him my internet regularly went down (as all my friends who have NTL do) and he just told me their ‘software was down’!!! What fucking software, and why the fuck is it down in the middle of the day at peak time!!!! Then he said he would ring me back later after I had troubleshooted the Modem. He did not explain how to, nor did he even know how to I would imagin. Anyway. There you go. this happens once to four times a week. Moving to 24MBps Unlimited broadband from Be Broadband In October.
Fucking NTL.