In late April, our videographer sent over the youtube links and info for our then upcoming commencement ceremonies this past weekend. I was carboned on the email but my boss told me that he was assigning the project to update the website to two of my colleagues. And with that, I promptly forgot about it.
Fast forward to this past Friday when the first of the ceremonies was to be held at 6 p.m. I got a Teams message from our videographer asking when the webpages would be updated – since they hadn’t been. I dug through my email to find his original message, and told him that I didn’t think it had been my project, but that I would take care of it.
While I was planning out the task – 5 pages with text and embedded youtube videos for the livestream – I got a Teams message from our VP asking about the same thing. Another VP was getting “anxious” about the links not being there and was looking for a timeframe. I replied that it was in progress and I would let them know when the Friday updates were done first.
And while I was working on that, I got another Teams message from the Associate Registrar. He was getting pressure from the “other VP” and from the School of Law – they now wanted the video link set-up on the general pages for their ceremony on Sunday as well.
So, one page with the list of the dates, times, and links to the livestream pages. And then five pages (including the School of Law now) for each of the ceremonies – one Friday, three Saturday, and one more on Sunday.
My boss was offline but I checked in with a couple colleagues and no one seemed to be in the loop already. I figured out which pages would need to be updated – named /three to /seven – and then one by one opened the youtube links to get the right code to share the right livestream link on the right page. It wasn’t complicated and I didn’t have to start from scratch, but it did require concentration to avoid any mistakes.
I got the Friday session set-up and updated our VP and the Associate Registrar. I also got what turned out to be incomplete – but still better than what I had – instructions on what I needed to do for Sunday. More on that later…
I worked my way through the Saturday sessions and had to think a bit on how the Sunday was going to work since it hadn’t been planned for the page.
That came together and I updated the VP, the Associate Registrar, and our videographer – after I triple checked and tested everything.
The last step was an email to my boss with a heads-up that it was done – admitting that I didn’t know who’s list this should have been on (and that it might have been my list), but that it was done and everyone was settled down.
He followed up later reminding me that he had forwarded the project to two colleagues when it was first sent – and thanking me for getting it done.
As a fun side note, I had wrapped up my message of our VP with a hearty “Go Team!” To which she responded that “there’s no I in team, but there is an A for Anthony! Thank you!”
So that was nice.
Fast forward a little bit to Sunday afternoon. I was visiting my folks for the day and we were just about to sit down for lunch at 1:00. I got a Teams message on my phone from the videographer that the livestream page for the School of Law commencement needed the “if the youtube close captioning doesn’t work, click here” link added.
I responded that I wasn’t at a computer but that I would do my best to get it done. Instead, I ate my lunch while it was warm, then asked my folks if I could borrow their laptop. It should only take me a couple of minutes to update – but they cautioned me that the laptop was very slow.
I sat down in the computer/scrapbook room to work at 1:29 – and things started to go downhill pretty fast.
It looked good at the start – the computer was already on and there was already a browser open. I put in the link to get to our website admin system and hit enter.
It took…a while to even give me the log-in page. I put in my credentials and then waited again for the MultiFactor Authentication to come up. I put in the code on my phone and waited again to finish the log-in. It took long enough that it nearly timed out, but I got into the editor.
And then the logo for the browser caught my eye. It was round like Chrome, had a design close to Firefox, but a color scheme like Edge.
I dragged the cursor to the application bar and once it caught up it gave me the name – the Wave Browser.
What. The. Shit?
I went back to my phone to do a quick search and the first result called it a “PUP” – a Potentially Unwanted Program. (This was even ahead of the official company website, so you know it was bad.)
And, stupid me, had already logged in.
Not willing to spend another second in that garbage-ware, I closed the Wave browser. After a moment, I found the Chrome icon (Mom had a lot on the desktop…) and fired it up.
When I say “fired” I really mean I double-clicked the icon and waited a while. When it finally loaded, it took me to the profile log-in screen. I hesitated since I didn’t want to create a profile for myself and bring in all my data – no one had time for that nonsense – but couldn’t find a Guest option.
I shook my head, closed that, and opened Edge – reluctantly.
Edge got as far as a completely black screen and then wouldn’t go any further.
I had to invoke the Task Manager – which also took a while – and managed to kill Edge. While it was dying I scrolled down in the list and sure enough – Wave was still running with 20 or so open processes.
No wonder the computer was so slow.
Desperate now, I opened Chrome again and selected my Dad’s profile – hoping that he had his password saved and that I wouldn’t have to go get him to log in.
It took me right in and I repeated the log-in process – each step an eternity.
While it was grinding away, I also tried a browser on my phone to see if I could execute the update from there. I was close – so close – but couldn’t select the text I needed to copy.
I turned my attention back to the struggling laptop and paused to think. I needed to open one of the other pages from Saturday, switch to code view, and copy a very specific chunk of HTML and CSS code. I used Ctrl+C to copy it – then a Right-click and Copy, just in case.
From there, I closed the Saturday page and opened the Sunday page. I got to the code view and to the right spot, then Pasted. The last step was to Save and Publish.
The screen went a dim gray while it worked and then…
Nothing. It wouldn’t finish. I was stuck on literally the last step. Again, what the shit?
I panicked a moment, then realized it might have done the work and just wasn’t finishing up letting me know.
Opening my phone again, I checked the page and sure enough – it had applied the changes.
I sent a quick Teams message to the videographer and told him I was done.
At 1:56 pm for a 2:00 ceremony.
By the time I got a “thank you” back, the editor had finished up the process and gave me back control. I Saved and re-Published the page for good measure – though it wasn’t exactly required – and logged off.
I updated my folks and rejoined the conversation – but then wandered back to the computer/scrapbook room after a while.
As the visiting-geek, I had a final task to do. I needed to destroy the Wave.
To do this, I first opened the Task Manager again and scrolled down to all those open processes. I started to kill each one and kept getting pop-ups like: “The Chat Notification has crashed – click here to restart it.”
No thank you and nice try. I had slowly gotten maybe halfway through the list before I hit the main process and the rest vanished.
I closed the Task Manager and went to the applications. Was this going to be full-on Malicious and fight back? Or was it going to pretend to be “legit” and have a clean uninstall?
I found the application in the list, right-clicked to choose Uninstall, and confirmed. Then I waited.
It took long enough that I went back to the conversation to check in and by the time I returned it was gone.
The real test would be to do a restart and see if it was really gone.
This took – a while. But it was more a function of being an old computer than anything nasty installed. The Wave browser was really gone and didn’t come back. And while they still need a new computer, you could almost call it…snappy. If you were generous.
And later, once I was back at my own computer – I reset my password. From what I’d found in my research and based on the behavior it was more “spammy” and a badly coded browser knock-off than really dangerous.
Still, it could have caused some real problems with my job if I’d been compromised – better to be prudent.
So, I saved the day on Friday, saved the day on Sunday – and then Saved the day for my parent’s computer as well.
A hero’s work is never done. But I was happy to log off.