Though most of the machines at home are currently Linux driven, there are a couple of Windows machines in the house that are used by my children for Software they Cannot Live Without. My teenager likes games, and my tweenager is quasi-addicted to iTunes.

Being a tolerant Dad you have to know when to pick your battles. This may be a shock to some Linux users out there, but compared to boys, piercings, and parties, letting them run Windows seemed to rank very low on the Dad scale of things that can possibly go wrong. Did I mention boys?

Now, it seems, I may have to revise this prioritization. Until this week, all went well, as the freeware AV software I had running seemed to catch everything that arrived on my daughters' virtual doorsteps. But after a couple of weeks of my middle child neglecting to update and scan with said software, I suddenly found myself facing a serious problem on her PC.

The problem was a very sneaky Trojan attack known in the security biz as ransomware. I had just happened to see a video about this very same type of attack early last week, so when my daughter called me upstairs to see "something weird" on her screen, I knew exactly what it was.

I launched my KNOPPIX liveCD