Sometime yesterday afternoon a trojan from Kazakhstan, and particularly a site identified as www.penetraterarest.com (don’t go there!) started spreading around the country. HE was hit sometime last night while I was at a large Christmas Eve party in Canoga Park. Google Chrome has blocked the site, and Firefox is sending out messages also. I haven’t checked Internet Explorer but Safari isn’t blocking as we speak.

I stayed up for 2 and 1/2 hours this morning (1 to 3:30 am) doing diagnostics and sending out “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!” messages to friends and tech guys. I’ve had a request for review by Google Webmaster accepted, but nothing helpful will result. A tech friend (thank the Lord) is going through the steps. I’m being told I should shut the site down until I can fix this.

It’s always something. The world is crawling with predators. You need to carry a gun and cultivate the friendship of tech gunslingers who can help when this crap happens. The virus is a variant of the Java/Exploit.Agent.NEB trojan. The java file is called FojZQA.jar. For what it’s worth a friend has run a check on a diagnostic site that says there’s no malware detected.

It’s a surmountable problem. I’m doing everything I can but who knows how long this’ll take? I guess I should be thankful this is happening on one of the slowest days of the year.

Kazakhstan, the world’s largest landlocked country, spreads across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Its territory of 2,727,300 square kilometers (1,053,000 sq miles) is larger than all of Western Europe. Neighbored countries (starting due north and moving by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan (how many “stan” countries are there?) and also borders on a large part of the Caspian Sea.

Kazakhstan has the 62nd largest population in the world, which doesn’t amount to much given the size. The population density is less than 6 people per square kilometer (15 per square mile).