Feels like the first time

I'd never gotten a real, live computer virus before, and this wasn't it: it was an exploit hiding inside a Java applet, inflicted on me by a message board which reportedly had been hacked and to which I may never return. Still, the discovery produced some major discomfiture, and I cleaned out all my in-house Java stuff just to be sure.

(Possible tip-off: same Microsoft update — for Flash, of all things — refuses to install after three tries.)

Update, 8:40 pm: I rescanned my Java directory, which came up clean. To my amazement, there were 31,406 files in there after the purge. (Total on the entire box is just shy of a quarter-million.)

Update, 10 pm: The Windows Update issue is apparently not related to the buggy Java stuff; Microsoft may be misreading the Flash version installed here (9.0.28.0). Further investigation is warranted.

Posted at 6:08 PM to PEBKAC