Saturday, May 7, 2011

Barn Owls and Hackers

Busy day at our house.  When I came home from the Driving Lesson and errand run routine, my daughter said there was a pueo (Hawaiian owl) on the branches we cut from the pines last weekend.  I got a good look at him, and he is actually a barn owl.

I threw a blanket over him and bundled him (or her, I suppose) into a cardboard box and called around to see if anyone could take care of owls.  Hmm - I just thought of some one else to call - my husband's cousin.....he is more of a nene goose kind of guy, but he might know someone.  The Humane Society was a bust and no one answered at the DLNR.  I really don't think this owl has a chance, really, but it is worth a try.

Another "exciting" happening was my younger son's computer getting hacked.  Some person with no taste and a cruel sense of humor decided it would be fun to remotely access my son's desktop and write rude things on his facebook wall.  My son first thought it was a FB hacker, but it was someone on his desktop.  He chatted with my son and a friend on the IM and attempted to change him to "female", but they fought with the mouse - my son kept moving it before he could change the settings.  We started running the Spyware doctor.

My older son, who is a computer guy, found the offender's IP address and sent him about a million packets to slow down his computer.  They "talked" through notepad on the younger son's desktop, and apparently, the hacker realized he was a bit overwhelmed, so he just typed "I'm done!" closed his trojan and seems to have gone quiet.  Of course, he is still dealing with the million packets hitting his OS, and the realization that we have his IP address.   I told my older son not to crash the guy's computer, but to make sure the back door is gone. It was a good lesson to everyone to turn off their computer at night.

I am extremely angry with this person, and grateful that my son could help his brother deal with the issue.

2 comments:

Chai Chai said...

Wow, having someone at home who can deal with hackers is a luxury.

Feeding and caring for the owl should be interesting, hopefully it won't go after your chickens once it is healthy again.

NancyDe said...

Chai Chai, the plan was to take the owl to a vet who takes care of rescued owls for the DLNR - but sadly, the little guy died. I figure he must have been fairly sick to be sitting out in the open during the day, but it is still sad.

My son is not a hacker, and so he is trying to learn a lot on how to remove the back door (the hacker keeps hiding it) but he is causing some nuisance for the guy, has reported him, has found the location of the computer (in CA) - and is learning a lot. He is not a hacker himself, more of a programmer, but he sure knows more than I do!