[PLUG-TALK] Quickbooks - online, virtual, emulator ...

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Thu Jan 24 00:08:20 UTC 2019


On 2019-01-23 13:27, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I haven't paid much attention to the Win7 guest, but it
> has sprung a leak; something (presumably malware) is
> eating about 100 megabytes of virtual disk per hour, and

On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 10:45:20PM +0000, Aaron Burt wrote:
> ...STOP RIGHT THERE.  Only reason that VM should be running now is
> to check for signs of malware and data exfiltration!  Oh and maybe
> to run a QuickBooks backup/export and copy that backup off ASAP.

> Best disable the VM's networking in any case.

Indeed, I already did that.  We have the data files,
possibly compromised :-(, on multiple USB keys, and
also on nightly Dirvish backups. 

The disk compression process took 10 hours overnight, and
from that I estimated the leakate rate.  Then I shut it
down ASAP.  I did not go into details, because my posting
was already too long, as this one will be. :-(
 
Keithl writes:
> Imagined alternatives:
> - Upgrade treadmill for Windoze and Quickbooks.
> - Container app for Quickbooks (not Wine compatible)
> - 99.9% data compatible Linux accounting software.
> - Quickbooks online from Intuit

Aaron writes:
> Those all sound like they'd involve a lot of downtime for a
> business-critical system.  In the interim, can you just build
> another Win7 image, reinstall QB on it and import the QB backup from
> the existing image?

The system isn't time critical - my wife does the books
once a month, a day or two before her bookkeeper shows up
to fix them.  That was two days ago, something wasn't
working right, so I started paying attention.

I should have paid attention months ago, but working
with Windows is as much fun as fixing a sewer line.

Win7 is near end-of-life, and out-of-the-box Win7 needs 
hundreds of patches.  I would spend two days figuring
that out and doing it.  I assume that Win10 is a major
look-and-feel change from Win7, something major to learn
(and screw up), just as Gnome3 is a major change from
Gnome2 (which I avoided by replacing Gnome3 with MATE). 

I hate wasting time on style-slave fashion upgrades;
my clothes closet attests to this.  There are so many
other more important things to learn.

At some point, the upgrade treadmill will demand more
attention than my wife and I can keep up with.  Hence,
weaning ourselves entirely from Windoze is not only
ideologically correct, it may be the easiest way for her
to maintain her steadily downsizing business processes
for the next five years or so.

Unless I hear good reasons otherwise (like a Quickbooks-
compatible Linux app, or a container process that I've
never heard of), the online approach seems least bad;
perhaps $1000 total baksheesh to Intuit for five years,
so that they maintain their own damned software.

That's better than staying on the treadmill, and
continuously paying to upgrade Windows, and Quickbooks,
and new hardware to run whatever the Marketdroids and
Aspies in Redmond deem to be a "user friendly interface".

----

The remaining issue is that the presumed malware may
have entered our system from the accountant's thumbdrive. 
If she is spreading malware to and from her other clients,
our problems are tiny compared to hers and theirs.  

So, thanks for the heads up about ransomware.  You may
have saved us some trouble, quite a few other small
businesses, and our accountant from bankrupting lawsuits.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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