Headfry is a common, much used and loved expression in Ireland, the UK and Australia.
It has a habit of popping up just about everywhere, which doesn’t say much for modern society.
Or maybe it says it all.
“Boy, that conversation was a real headfry”. “ "He really fries my head”."It’s all way too complicated.
I can’t make head nor tail of it. It’s a total headfry.” People also use 'headwreck' as a noun and verb. What an inveterate lot!
But what has it to do with IT security you ask?
That’s easy.
For many people, dealing with IT security for any length of time quite simply leads to rapidly increasing
levels of headfry.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a skilled IT worker or a babe in the woods home user. Someday, sometime,
some place, exposure to the omnipresent deluge of worms, viruses, Trojans, pop ups, spyware, automatic updates,
and spam will cause intense medically verifiable levels of headfry. It could even be lethal in extreme cases.
Whether your lot in life is to install patches on corporate networks with the speed and precision of a robotic
arm in the race to patch before the bad guys can reverse engineer the fix and take you out, or a sweet old
granny trying to commune with the grandkids, the result is the same. Headfry, and more headfry.
They told me that their browser settings kept changing. A quick look revealed that they indeed reverted
to the home page of what was conceivably the Russian mafia. Evil looking pop ups were everywhere. It was
truly a terrible sight. The PC was possessed. Another malevolent life form had usurped its very being.
I approached it the way one might approach a Velociraptor - with extreme care.
A diagnosis of terminal illness was swiftly dispensed. There was little or no hope of survival. It was a
particularly sad case.
The horrified onlookers, the owners of the festering machine, could not understand how this could have
happened to them.
The history
Gentle prodding revealed a common, but unhappy history. They had bought the machine from a reputable
vendor, and understood it came with anti virus (AV) software and ‘whatever they needed’, broadly but vaguely
defined. They did not know that this trial AV package had expired, or that it was necessary to update the
virus definitions to keep the machine safe and well.
They had no idea that spyware had sucked the life force from their fateful servant, or that the lack of a
firewall exposed them to a raft of horrors.
If I had told them that the cult of the undead had taken over their basement, and would soon consume them
morsel-by-morsel, they could not have been more perturbed.
Their sense of violation was intense in the extreme, and the unaccustomed feeling of helplessness left them
disconcerted.
The verdict
I pronounced the PC needful of intensive care. Their reaction was “let’s get a new one and be rid of the
frightful beast”. Music to Dell’s ears. Which just goes to show, one man’s misfortune is another’s
opportunity.
I tried valiantly to explain the need for AV software, anti spyware software, and personal firewalls, with
the proviso that any and all of the above might cause other problems, lack of access to sites they wanted
to view, incompatibility problems with email programs, and that the AV software wouldn’t catch everything
in any event, such as zero day viruses (brand new viruses), many backdoor programs, etc, etc.
I mused that at this very moment hackers and carders were possibly selling their credit card details on
line to eastern European crime gangs, and so on.
These dire predictions and ruminations proved just too much for them.
They cried, how could things be this bad and educated people not know about it? And who was protecting them?
And where should they go for help and to learn? And what was being done about all this?
What could I tell them? What could I say that at least in the short term would ease their concern? Where to
even start?
We decided to call it a day.
Hours had passed. Daylight was fading into night.
They would buy a new PC with all the bells and whistles I suggested should help (but might not), and buy
every support option available to mankind. I explained that many AV companies do not provide free support,
so you are on your own if disaster strikes and you are, for instance, unable to access their ‘live update’
services, or your system freezes, and you cannot make head nor tail of it.
Adopting a computer savvy kid was declared a definite option. There is after all nothing quite like home
help.
And finally, over a welcome cuppa, we all declared the whole frightful business to be a complete, total,
absolute headfry.
And so headfry was born.
