The Mother of All Infected Windows XP Systems
My mom has a Windows XP system with an always-on high-speed Internet connection that's occasionally used by relatives and other guests. The PC had become glacially slow, opening new web pages after a pause of 10 or more seconds, so I started looking for spyware or viruses that might be causing the problem.I brought the virus definitions in Norton Anti-Virus up to date and installed Ad-Aware to look for other junk.
As they were running, shortly after midnight the PC began sending hundreds of spams that triggered "Scanning message" dialogs in a Norton program that inspects outgoing e-mail for viruses. The computer was infected with Trojan.Abwiz and had been hijacked by a spammer. Hundreds of spams were being sent each minute until I yanked the DSL cable to stop the deluge.
A post on Spyware Sucks describes a Russian spam operation exploiting some of the other trojan files present on her computer, which included winsub.xml, svcp.csv and taskdir.dll:
What I thought was going to be pretty standard forensics "ok-the-machine-is-infected (yawn) lets-get-it-cleaned, reduce user permissions and give it back" turned out to be anything but. While I was connected to the PC via VNC something bad on that box woke up. A slew of connections were made to Russia right before my eyes and things suddenly got very very interesting. This was very cool - sure, I've seen many reports of infected PCs, and helped users fix their machines from afar using various automated products and analysis logs, but I've never had the chance to be hands on with a real, live, actively pumping spambot
Her PC had both Windows Firewall and Norton Anti-Virus running, though the latter's virus definitions were last updated in January. Neither one stopped this crack, which is reportedly installed by exploiting an Internet Explorer vulnerability. I think I've found and removed the trojans, which weren't gone completely until I got rid of all System Restore backups saved by XP, but I'm tempted to wipe the hard drive and reinstall to make sure.
Because Trojan.Abwiz can update itself and send data such as a keystroke log to other compromised PCs, mom has to change her credit card numbers and review other confidential information that might now be in the hands of identity thieves.
In other news, Microsoft will be releasing 12 security updates on Tuesday.
Outsourcing: Not Safe for Work
I've taken Workbench back from Vivek Seal.I appreciate his efforts -- especially considering some of the abuse he took -- but remain unsold on the notion that outsourcing is beneficial to Americans. Seal's clear on the fact that it helps India, of course, but the most he offers us is a platitude that's laid on downsized employees all the time -- you ought to develop skills for another job that'll make you more valuable:
I know many jobs are being lost but there are many new jobs which are being created. A person has to forecast what kind of a job is indispensable and should strive for that to retain one's job. I am absolutely sure that now the time is here where a person cannot relax in his job and must keep adding extra qualifications and training on a regular basis.
No one who offers this advice ever provides an example of an indispensable new job. For geeks like me who gravitate to software development and related professions, I don't see anything that can't be done in places where $15,000 a year buys an aspirational middle class life. When I was 20 in 1987, a computer science degree was a pretty solid path to the American dream. Today, even software project management is being outsourced. What do career counselors tell college freshmen with undeclared majors when they express an interest in programming? They ought to wire their chairs and dispense a corrective electrical shock.
I don't begrudge Seal's people taking their shot at the Indian dream, but I think it's in Americans' self-interest to make outsourcing as expensive as possible.
In April, Information Week reported that the cost-saving benefits of outsourcing are exaggerated:
... while more companies are turning critical IT and business functions like help desk support and customer service over to third parties, who in turn often send the work to subsidiaries in low-cost countries like India or China, they're saving less from the process than is widely believed. In India, programmers and service workers are paid anywhere from 80% to 40% less than their U.S. counterparts. However, the overhead associated with outsourcing appears to be eating up the bulk of those savings. Factoring in transition, legal, advisory, and management costs, outsourcing typically lets a company reduce the expense of a particular function by 15%, TPI says.
A 15 percent savings seems pretty vulnerable, considering the hassles involved in moving a company's labor to the other side of the planet. Americans don't like jobs moving overseas, because the fears of a shrinking middle class are one of the things on which red, blue and purple America agree completely. Companies like Dell are vulnerable to the publicity associated with moving work to India. If outsourcing became the dolphin-unsafe tuna of this decade and that 15 percent savings dropped, it could be extremely tough for workers in places like India to compete with Americans closer to home.
If that happens, I hope Vivek can find new training in something more indispensable.
Outsourcing: What's in a Name?
A name, your preview to the world, may mean everything to someone, but in call centers in India they choose an alias name for themselves to make Americans life easier. Whether they are able to do it or not is a separate issue altogether.You all must be surprised to know that the U.K. companies are much more broadminded as compared to the U.S. ones in the accent, name and even the culture of an employee (maybe because of our past).
In fact all the voice-based processes in India are divided into the U.K. and U.S. units. The U.K. ones generally do not require you to choose an alias name or to make your accent British, in fact they let you keep your original name and ask you to try speaking in a neutral accent.
Indian youth just go totally ballistic in choosing an American name. Famous ones are "Mr. Anderson" or "Mr. Smith," more Hollywood names like "Tom", "Will" for the Adams and for the Eves it is "Nicole" or "Marie," etc. They do this so that you people will get a feeling that you are talking to someone American and not some Indian dude.
But as far as I know, many companies are letting the employees use their original names instead of the fake ones. Is it helpful or not is what you people have to analyze. So what do you think: Should the Indian call center executive welcome you with an Indian name like "Mr. Rangaswamy" or with much familiar name to you like "Mr. Smith"?
This post was written by Vivek Seal.
Outsourcing: Drop the Accent
I have received many comments that Americans are getting pissed because of the accent of the offshored employees. I just had a meeting with a top executive from Vertex, which is one of the biggest BPO companies in the world (right now they are Eurocentric), and that young gentleman told me that many of their British customers are happy with the work being done in India -- and in fact the customer satisfaction is headed towards north.I can validate this argument further because when I was there in Convergys two years back, I remember my team manager was maintaining the quality of the calls above or around 90 percent (same or above the US/European levels) -- quality: first call resolution, empathizing and going the extra mile. The quality evaluators I had were from the UK itself and the company was Capital One (which is unheard in India but is quite popular abroad).
Our team was hitting the quality targets, which were above the standards maintained by their US/European counterparts again and again. The big greedy "corporates," as many of you say it, are no fools to offshore their business so that they can drive away their customers. There are set quality standards for the BPO industry, which is met by the vendors to maintain their promises.
Also, I must tell you guys that the average education level for a call center job in India is at least a graduate degree (bachelors in commerce, economics, arts, etc.) as compared to school-level education there. For all you people who are not happy with an accent, just imagine the time you called up someone in your country and try to compare it without having this inherent hate for outsourcing. You may very well realize that it is not all that bad -- I mean the accent.
This post was written by Vivek Seal.
Interview Request: Americans Affected by Outsourcing
I am very keen on doing a story about Americans who have lost their jobs due to outsourcing. Global Services reaches an audience of around 50,000 in the U.S. and I really would like to know the views of the CEOs, CFOs, CTOs and others who have lost their jobs. If you have any suggestions for people I should interview, send an e-mail through this weblog.This post was written by Vivek Seal.
How Outsourcing Looks from New Delhi
I am really excited to blog on an issue which is so dear to my heart. Beforehand I must tell you that I have seen this industry from all the angles, I was a CCE in Convergys India (Gurgaon) and was working in a UK process so I have the real floor experience, then I worked as a feature writer for India's national daily The Pioneer and tried to analyze the ill-effects of outsourcing, like aping Western culture, sleeping disorders (insomnia and bad health) etc. If that was not enough many Indian Left parties were against outsourcing as they were and are against FDIs in India. And finally I started to know this industry in detail after joining Global Services. So at the age of 23 I have researched a bit on the outsourcing industry.I know it is very tough to convince anyone who has lost his or her job because of outsourcing, but blaming India and other countries will not solve their problems. Various reports and studies come out with contradicting statements like "outsourcing is over" and others say it will stay forever, some will say India is losing its advantage and some will say India can never lose its advantage.
From my own views I can very well say that outsourcing is extremely beneficial for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) as I have seen that many companies who were about to close down their shops because of the rising wages -- and also after the dot-com bust -- came to India for survival. They not only survived but also started to compete universally. But as usual, revenue-wise, it is the big companies who gain the most.
I know many jobs are being lost but there are many new jobs which are being created. A person has to forecast what kind of a job is indispensable and should strive for that to retain one's job. I am absolutely sure that now the time is here where a person cannot relax in his job and must keep adding extra qualifications and training on a regular basis.
Curbing free trade is not the best idea anywhere, as all of us who have had our business economics courses in college must know. Restrictions over free trade affects both parties.
I just wanna ask one thing: If some American company invents a machine that can replace 100 laborers working in India, does it mean that the Indian company should not buy that machine which is economical and efficient? Just because the situation is the other way around, there is a such a hue and cry about it -- that we should make a policy to retrain those displaced and provide them employment.
End of the day, all of us benefit from software that is cheaper and more uniformly distributed. If it wasn't for us, software would have become much more expensive.
This post was written by Vivek Seal.
This Weblog is Being Sent Overseas
For the next week, I've outsourced this weblog to Vivek Seal, 23, a technology reporter for Global Services in New Delhi, India.
Seal recently posted a comment here touting the benefits of outsourcing:
If a person from Bangalore is able to do a job in less than half the cost and with more efficiency then that rationally a best thing for all the parties around it. No matter what. ...
All I wanna say is give India a chance to improve this world.
We hear a lot of dire statements in the U.S. about how our jobs and our standard of living are being lost to workers overseas, especially in technology. Seal covers this trend and is in part an embodiment of it, working in journalism for a media company that's partially based in the U.S.
As a technology writer and programmer, I'm facing competition in both fields from Seal and the people he covers in India.
Since he believes in outsourcing, I decided to give him a chance to make his case directly to an American audience by outsourcing this weblog.
He's not being paid for the work and has full editorial license to write about anything he likes, since anyone who reads Workbench has absolutely no idea what I'm going to cover. If you have any questions for Seal, please use the comments on this weblog.
Social Media
Subscriptions
Blogroll
Projects
RSS Advisory Board
How to Read an RSS Feed with Java Using XOM
The RSS Advisory Board Just Turned 20
Downloading 50,000 Podcast Feeds to Analyze Their RSS
Tara Calishain Explains: What is RSS?
Be Unique And Use RSS Guid Like Everybody Else
Statistics
This blog has been published since Nov. 7, 1999 (a span of 9,403 days).
Thank you for visiting Workbench.
