[Tfug] How I attacked my computer

[Earl]

I'm setting up FVWM on my Ubuntu machine.  I changed my FVWM root menu  shortly before going to the TFUG happy hour.  I shut down my machine planning to test the change when I returned.

When I returned, I booted and went into FVWM.  Things worked just fine until I opened Firefox.  Instead of opening into Google, Juno, and Yahoo, Firefox opened a website called http://www.nop.com.  I shutdown Firefox and reopened it and the same thing happened.  I changed to Ubuntu and opened Firefox and got Google, Juno, and Yahoo.

I went to my ~/.fvwm/config file.

The original menu section read:

+          "Web &Browser"         Exec exec firefox
+          ""                     Nop

to remove the separation line in the menu, I changed the line to read:

+          "Web &Browser"         Exec exec firefox     Nop

by going back to the original lines, I stopped the attack.

If there's a point to this anecdote, it is "Linux isn't secure as long as there's a keyboard connected to the computer."

Earl

"God made man, Sam Colt made men equal."
"The fates guide him who will, him who won't they drag" Spengler