A Message from An Unexpected Person

Hi readers! It feel so surreal to be finally back to Singapore and my busyness as an NUS student. Did I really go to China for an exchange last semester? Just slightly more than 2 months ago I was still there? Doesn't feel like it at all, especially when you are 5 km deep within seas of responsibilities and school work.

Just to update you guys, I am enrolled in Facebook Open Academy programme through my university this semester. It is basically a programme where students work on an open-source projects and Facebook becomes the intermediary between the project owners/IC and the universities. It took quite a lot of my time as the demand from my university is quite high regarding this, and I have been under-delivering results. Also, I become a laboratory teaching assistant for Data Structures and Algorithm I course in NUS, which takes much more time than I expected. However, for the money (which I need desperately) I shall persevere!

Now, I am 2 paragraphs in and not a mention about any message or any unexpected person. Sorry about that, I thought you readers would like to know how I'm doing after my previous post 2 months+ ago. No? Okay, sorry.

So today (or rather, last night) when I was about to go to the shower, I received a WhatsApp text. I was thinking to just leave it after I shower, like what I usually do. However, for that particular moment, I thought, ah screw it, perhaps it's just something quick. As it turned out, it was the girl from my Summer Camp (not to be confused with Summer Programme!) in China 3 years ago! It came as a pleasant surprise, really. I delayed my shower and replied her message.

Basically she texted because her Dad's comp was infected by a virus. However, there is nothing I can do about it since I am by no means good at dealing with that kind of thing (unless you count Googling it as being good at dealing with things), and from what I understand from my Googling, it is almost impossible to retrieve the infected files.

So for you guys who are interested or knowledgeable or both in computer science, basically the virus encrypts your personal files and then it will hijack your startup program to show the ransom message. Basically they ask the victim to pay a ransom to recover (read: decrypt) their files. One symptom that shows your computer is infected (aside from the ransom message) is that some of your files' extension are changed into .micro (could be other names too). Of course, you can try decrypting the encrypted files, but they are apparently using RSA which  basically means it is practically impossible to find the private key (key used to decrypt) in reasonable amount of time (just like any reasonable cryptography methods), even if you know the public key (key used to encrypt). Not sure why they need to use public key cryptography when they can just use AES or other single-key encryptions. Perhaps they are scared that someone reverse-engineer their virus-programme and find the key inside? Probably. With RSA, even if you can revese-engineer the program and find the key used to encrypt it, the key needed to decrypt it will be different, and it will be kept somewhere safe by the "hacker".

Back to the non-geeky stuff, apparently she still reads my blog routinely, every month she claimed. I find it hard to believe because I myself as the author don't even update my blog that often and yet she still loyally checks every month? There are only a few explanations for it: either she is extremely bored, my blog is extremely interesting, or she just cares about me. Apparently some of the things I posted here about her did not stop her from caring about me. I am impressed. And flattered, too.

Well, since I know you'll be reading this, I still don't see any future between us if that's what you have in mind. unless you move to Singapore for further studies within the next 4-5 years, or somehow I move to wherever you chose to pursue your further studies, which I don't see any chance of it happening. I would love to know you more, and perhaps guide you from your school-centered life to one with more variety. But I really don't see it happening, at least any time soon. Perhaps you can prove me wrong. I'd love to be proven wrong on this one.

Or if you don't have any thing like that in mind (like maybe my blog is indeed THAT interesting) then.. Thanks, I guess lol. Or if you are extremely bored, I would still love to do the above paragraph (guide you to see the world outside school! Please! It is awesome! They have cookies and everything!)

Anyway, until then, if it ever happens, all the best in your future endeavours, Cha. :)