[Updated 7:05 PM, July 28: Added results of a virus scan of the laptop.]
Centrum Café in Springfield was winding down. It was 8:35 P.M. on Sunday, July 26. A young woman dressed in black swept up crumbs in the café, while two other women made final preparations in the kitchen.
It was about 15 minutes since she said “thank you for coming” to the last customer, and it didn’t appear any others would come before closing time at 9. Before that, the place was dense with screech of children and the exchanges of the middle-aged and elderly. I briefly considered sending a Tweet about the children running wild, but resisted, deciding not to be a curmudgeon. “Frozen custard on Sunday,” I thought, and shook the idea off.
My laptop glowed in the dim cafe with the text of E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.” Next to it was the remains of an Italian soda and a picked-at brownie. The brownie was a mixture of chocolate, nuts and coconut. It wasn’t very healthy, and wasn’t very tasty, but I chipped it away as not to be wasteful. I wasn’t going to finish it - I was near ready to leave and let the employees finish cleaning in peace.
A man with salt-and-peppered hair and moustache approached me. I recognized him from before; he sometimes wore what appeared to be a chef’s uniform when he was in the kitchen.
“Are you Matthew?”
I was surprised, but it felt like the good kind of surprise. Maybe he knew my writing. Maybe I had a fan. I didn’t know how he knew me, but became cheery in an instant.
“Yeah, that’s me! Matthew [last name].”
“I’ve seen your computer on our system. You’ve been downloading music and stealing financial records.”
“What?”
“I have sensors all over this café, and they’ve been showing that you’ve been hacking into our computers and stealing financial records.”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve just been reading here.”
He wasn’t an instrument of the law, and he didn’t have a search warrant, but I felt compelled to show this man who accused me of very serious things that what I was doing in his restaurant. I turned my laptop in his direction to show him the E.M. Forster story. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Perhaps it made him feel he had the right to look. Whatever the case, it only made him more curious.
“Were you on 90?”
“Was I on what?”
“Were you on 90?”
“I don’t know what that is. I’m using ‘Centrum Café.’ I just opened my laptop and it works.”
“Show me your network connections.”
My nerves were beginning to cave. I dabbed the pad on the black IBM Lenovo laptop, and my finger began to shake. My face was turning red. Was this guy about to call the police over something I didn’t do? Would they seize my laptop and scour through my personal data to conjure up some imaginary motive for a crime I didn’t commit? What did this guy want from me?
Fumbling through a few Windows Vista screens, I found the networks he was talking about. He asked me to connect to one of them, and I tried. The computer thought for a moment before giving up. I clicked on another one, and it prompted a security code, which for obvious reasons, I didn’t have. I shrugged as the screen asked for the code, and cancelled out. He didn’t back off.
“What are your hours?”
“Hours? Just… whenever?”
“What do you do?”
“What do I do? I’m… I’m unemployed. I’m a writer… I just come in here to read and write. That’s all.”
I grabbed the copy of Raymond Carver’s “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please,” and Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Rum Diaries,” in an effort to convince him that I was the reading and writing type, not the hacking and stealing type. I half expected him to want to look at my books, too, but he turned and began walking to the kitchen.
“Do it again, and I’ll bar you from the café,” he said over his shoulder.
“I’m just here to read,” I said, stuffing Carver, Thompson and my laptop into my bag.
I headed for the door, concerned that my haste might give the wrong impression. But I didn’t feel safe there any longer, so I didn’t hang around.
“Thank you for coming!” the girl said as the door shut behind me.
Update on 7:05 PM, July 28
Some readers, rightly so, have wondered about the security of the laptop that was used in the cafe. It is not out of possibility that a virus could, without the operator's knowledge, infiltrate a network and cause all sorts of issues. I consider myself a fairly safe user, reasonably aware of the symptoms of these viruses and the ways in which a computer can become infected. For one, I always use a firewall, and this Lenovo did come with a copy of Norton, which I used periodically. But to resolve this question with more certainty, I purchased from Best Buy a new, 2009 copy of Norton Internet Security, updated it after installing, restarted, and ran a full system scan. This is the result:
The Norton scan concluded that no viruses were found, with the only possible issues being some 48 tracking cookies.
Given this result, it being the first virus scan since the incident, I'm fairly confident that there were no viruses on this computer, and it presented no security threats to Centrum Cafe, or anyone else on that network.
Read on...
Centrum Café in Springfield was winding down. It was 8:35 P.M. on Sunday, July 26. A young woman dressed in black swept up crumbs in the café, while two other women made final preparations in the kitchen.
It was about 15 minutes since she said “thank you for coming” to the last customer, and it didn’t appear any others would come before closing time at 9. Before that, the place was dense with screech of children and the exchanges of the middle-aged and elderly. I briefly considered sending a Tweet about the children running wild, but resisted, deciding not to be a curmudgeon. “Frozen custard on Sunday,” I thought, and shook the idea off.
My laptop glowed in the dim cafe with the text of E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.” Next to it was the remains of an Italian soda and a picked-at brownie. The brownie was a mixture of chocolate, nuts and coconut. It wasn’t very healthy, and wasn’t very tasty, but I chipped it away as not to be wasteful. I wasn’t going to finish it - I was near ready to leave and let the employees finish cleaning in peace.
A man with salt-and-peppered hair and moustache approached me. I recognized him from before; he sometimes wore what appeared to be a chef’s uniform when he was in the kitchen.
“Are you Matthew?”
I was surprised, but it felt like the good kind of surprise. Maybe he knew my writing. Maybe I had a fan. I didn’t know how he knew me, but became cheery in an instant.
“Yeah, that’s me! Matthew [last name].”
“I’ve seen your computer on our system. You’ve been downloading music and stealing financial records.”
“What?”
“I have sensors all over this café, and they’ve been showing that you’ve been hacking into our computers and stealing financial records.”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve just been reading here.”
He wasn’t an instrument of the law, and he didn’t have a search warrant, but I felt compelled to show this man who accused me of very serious things that what I was doing in his restaurant. I turned my laptop in his direction to show him the E.M. Forster story. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Perhaps it made him feel he had the right to look. Whatever the case, it only made him more curious.
“Were you on 90?”
“Was I on what?”
“Were you on 90?”
“I don’t know what that is. I’m using ‘Centrum Café.’ I just opened my laptop and it works.”
“Show me your network connections.”
My nerves were beginning to cave. I dabbed the pad on the black IBM Lenovo laptop, and my finger began to shake. My face was turning red. Was this guy about to call the police over something I didn’t do? Would they seize my laptop and scour through my personal data to conjure up some imaginary motive for a crime I didn’t commit? What did this guy want from me?
Fumbling through a few Windows Vista screens, I found the networks he was talking about. He asked me to connect to one of them, and I tried. The computer thought for a moment before giving up. I clicked on another one, and it prompted a security code, which for obvious reasons, I didn’t have. I shrugged as the screen asked for the code, and cancelled out. He didn’t back off.
“What are your hours?”
“Hours? Just… whenever?”
“What do you do?”
“What do I do? I’m… I’m unemployed. I’m a writer… I just come in here to read and write. That’s all.”
I grabbed the copy of Raymond Carver’s “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please,” and Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Rum Diaries,” in an effort to convince him that I was the reading and writing type, not the hacking and stealing type. I half expected him to want to look at my books, too, but he turned and began walking to the kitchen.
“Do it again, and I’ll bar you from the café,” he said over his shoulder.
“I’m just here to read,” I said, stuffing Carver, Thompson and my laptop into my bag.
I headed for the door, concerned that my haste might give the wrong impression. But I didn’t feel safe there any longer, so I didn’t hang around.
“Thank you for coming!” the girl said as the door shut behind me.
Update on 7:05 PM, July 28
Some readers, rightly so, have wondered about the security of the laptop that was used in the cafe. It is not out of possibility that a virus could, without the operator's knowledge, infiltrate a network and cause all sorts of issues. I consider myself a fairly safe user, reasonably aware of the symptoms of these viruses and the ways in which a computer can become infected. For one, I always use a firewall, and this Lenovo did come with a copy of Norton, which I used periodically. But to resolve this question with more certainty, I purchased from Best Buy a new, 2009 copy of Norton Internet Security, updated it after installing, restarted, and ran a full system scan. This is the result:
The Norton scan concluded that no viruses were found, with the only possible issues being some 48 tracking cookies.
Given this result, it being the first virus scan since the incident, I'm fairly confident that there were no viruses on this computer, and it presented no security threats to Centrum Cafe, or anyone else on that network.
