Follow the Bouncing Malware: Day of the Jackal

Published: 2007-04-23,
Last Updated: 2007-04-24 01:22:48 UTC by Tom Liston (Version: 1)

Otte Normalverbraucher leaned back in his chair, stretched and yawned. It was nearing midnight, and now that he stopped to think about it, he realized that he was going to be very tired in when his alarm clock went off in the morning.

The real problem was that his typing skills just weren't very good. Oh sure, he could type... but he wasn't very fast, or for that matter, very accurate. It had taken him almost two hours to type out his reply to his cousin Joe in America, and even then, looking back over the message, it was filled with typing errors.

He chuckled silently to himself, reminded of an old joke: it didn't matter that he couldn't type very quickly... his cousin, Joe Sixpack, couldn't read very fast either.

They do. But don't try it. Really. This means you. Yes you. Don't look at me like that. You know that you're just sitting there, fighting the urge to go try it-- acting all nonchalant, like you don't care. It's slowly eating away at you. We both know that you're trying to think of something... anything else... just to keep your mind off of wanting to rip the nearest USB cable out its jack so you can go check to see if I'm telling you the truth. But I am. I am. Would I lie to you?

It Happened One Night

At this point in most of the other FTBM postings, I would-- in a rare display of lucidity-- take a moment to step aside from my normally disjointed prose to warn you, my dear reader, of the perils of embarking on any attempt to "play around" with the malicious code we're about to examine. Having discovered, over these many years, that none of you actually pay one damn bit of attention to what I say, I've decided to say "t'hell with it..." Have fun! Launch the malware! Run with scissors! Play with matches! Swim right after eating! Don't wear clean underwear, you'll never be in an accident! Your mother was WRONG!

Imagine, if you will, that you're the newest contestant on the latest reality-tv show, Idle American Apprentice to the Dancing Bachelorette Stars. Like all good reality shows (now there's an oxymoron...), you have the opportunity to "earn" your way to be safe from elimination (you know, that time of the evening when the grumpy, scowling dude with the bad comb-over says "You're Fired"®), if you can manage to "win" some sort of utterly contrived daily "challenge."

And, oh, what a challenge it is!

You're teamed up with a partner, who is blindfolded, given a cell phone, and driven to your home. After being spun around a few dozen times to mess with their sense of direction (and really, who doesn't like seeing dizzy, stressed-out people in blindfolds stumbling around in unfamiliar surroundings? Heck, that's how the missus and I spend many a Friday evening... uh... um... nevermind...) they're placed in some random room of your home. Using only the cell phone, you need to be the first contestant to somehow direct them to find the kitchen and make your pouty-lipped, rail-thin bachelorette a peanut-butter 'n' jelly sammich.

So, what do you do?

Obviously, before anyone will be slappin' Smuckers and Skippy on bread, there's going to need to be a whole lot o'back-and-forth on the phone-- first, as you try to figure out where they are, and then as you try to tell them how to get where they need to be. Remember, they can't see because they're blindfolded, so you'll need to rely on all of their other senses. You might start by asking them whether there is carpet on the floor, whether they hear the ticking of a clock... you might ask them to slowly walk around the room and to tell you what the furniture they find in the room feels like, etc... etc... The idea is, you have to start by trying to somehow figure out their location. Once you know where they are, then you can start to giving them some broad direction: "First, face the couch... then turn left. Walk forward until you get to the wall, and then move along it to your left until you find the door. Go out through the door and turn left..." Then, as you navigate them into the kitchen, you'll get increasingly specific: "open the third cupboard door to the left of the stove, the peanut butter is on the second shelf..."