This article was taken from ComputerEdge in the December 7, 2001 Edition. There's not many viruses that alert my attention as much as this one has. It's like a real person hacking the system and doing things deliberately... although maybe it is? I don't know. It's a VERY interesting read. Enjoy! - Cali Girl

Author Judith Zirin-Hyman

I remember paying a typist $1.25 per page to type my law school papers, while my more technologically advanced classmates were using PCs—I definitely came late to the computer arena. Once ensconced in an office, though, it seemed I couldn’t help but learn what was in front of me: WordPerfect, Solitaire and then, finally, the pièce de résistance: the Internet. It held the promise of information and the lure of companionship and, ultimately, the relief of convenience. My technophobia gone, the Net became a part of my life, and I learned to love to research, play games, and shop on the Internet.

I have found everything from a Space Shuttle lunch box to a plus-size black strapless bra on the Internet and, as a stay-at-home mom, I appreciate shopping trips that can take place at midnight, in my pajamas, without my kids pulling Ho-Hos and Rugrats pasta off the shelves or hiding underneath racks of clothes. I have become addicted to the game Wordracer on Yahoo!, sending the kids to watch just one more video while I play word games with strangers, trying to exercise what’s left of my brain after four years of full-time motherhood.

My computer and I shop together, order food together, play games together and, as an aspiring writer, I even confide in it, pouring out my innermost secrets, most opinionated thoughts, dreams of who and where I want to be, and the to-do lists that will take me there.

Then all of that changed. It started with an e-mail, ostensibly from my husband, from an account we have never used. There was a note saying, “Hi! How are you? I send you this file in order to have your advice. See you later. Thanks.” It didn’t sound like my husband—the syntax sounded like that of someone whose native language is not English. My heart began to beat louder. I imagined someone breaking into our system, gaining access to our e-mail account.

Opening the attachment anxiously, I recognized the beginning of an article I had written—more like some thoughts I had strung together—on childhood violence. A stranger, reading my computer files, choosing one of my own essays on childhood violence to send me. What was the message behind this? A threat?

I called my husband—who indeed had not sent it—and then phoned the cable company through whom we have Internet access. Then my brother called to tell me that he had received an e-mail with a virus from my husband—the attachment was a birthday party list. My husband talked to “the computer people” at work, we again spoke with the Internet provider, we checked with friends and, slowly, the situation became clear. What we had, thankfully, was not a violent hacker pursuing us individually. The answer was almost as insidious, though: a computer virus called Sircam—a worm that sends random files from your hard drive to people on your mail distribution lists, as well as to addresses from Web pages you have recently visited or downloaded from.

It took me a few short hours to realize that my life was now an open book. People I barely have an e-mail relationship with had been sent personal files from my PC. This would be fine, except that I am someone who commits every feeling to paper, or, with the advent of modern technology, to my hard drive. My computer, my former best friend, was now betraying my confidences, spewing forth the detritus of my everyday life and the random thoughts lurking in my subconscious, laughing at me behind my back with an online community that spanned distant relatives, rediscovered childhood friends and the parents of my children’s schoolmates. I made a list of everyone who could be on a mailing distribution list and began making phone calls to try to catch people before our message infected their computers (and before they read any files received). I was panicking, wanting to do damage control. The people I called . . . well, mostly they were happy to catch up.

I got to hear my friend Sandie’s new baby cry—something the occasional e-mail doesn’t quite convey the essence of. It was wonderful to hear people’s voices, sad to have to cut them off to get back to the master list. My mother called relatives, my friends called friends of theirs who had wound up on my list, and I called, well, basically everyone I have ever known. And what I found out was perplexing: Sircam was touted as random, but in practice seemed anything but.

The most fit woman I have ever met, a marathon runner, received my grocery list (complete with a Sircam tag line asking the recipient for her advice on it). My new sister-in-law received pictures of Cinderella in her ball gown finery—after we had just been a part of her fairy-tale wedding. A friend who had never RSVP’d to my kid’s birthday party got a copy of the itinerary for that party. Was Sircam looking out for me, or just being funny?

Then we cleaned the virus off the computer, and I was able to access my e-mail files and discover what was being sent out. The novel I wrote five years ago—and haven’t been confident enough to send out—was whirling out in cyberspace. My résumé, long stagnant, had also been sent out by Sircam. Articles known only to me and my hard drive—out there. Sircam was more than just a prankster, this ostensible menace had actually done for me what years of therapy had yet to achieve: My writing was being sent out, and my résumé was being submitted.

Fredericks of Hollywood thanked me for my comments. Employers thanked me for applying for jobs, and promised to be in touch should an appropriate job opportunity come up. Sircam had sent files to Web sites like TV Guide, Time Out New York and others that I apparently had visited. Sure, I had to worry that my secret ramblings would be exposed to people I barely knew, but in the meantime I had reconnected with old friends, applied for jobs, gotten over my fear of showing people my writing, and even sought long-needed nutritional advice. No ordinary computer virus, Sircam turned out to be a motivational worm with a dry sense of humor.

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