My beloved daughter looked something up for me on the internet and clicked on the first return from google, which brought her to a virus warning.
She clicked on something after that, I really don't know what, she forgot the first rule in viruses and mom's computer: GET MOM.
Shortly after clicking who knows what, I lost all internet. When I restarted my machine, not fully comprehending what she'd seen/done, I lost my personal email via Outlook.
My paid for, current AVG was completely removed from the desktop and was unusable from that computer.
I went to AVG's website and created a rescue CD. I've spent the last two days running virus scans from this disk -- each scan takes about an hour to run and I haven't had hours to sit around running one after the other. This is going slow.
One of my concerns is that the AVG rescue CD has virus definitions from June 2010. At April 2011, those definitions seem woefully out dated.
The scans are turning up nothing.
Is there another website where I can burn a CD with current definitions and that will capture this attack? I have no idea if it was a virus, worm or trojan horse...although I suspect the horse considering how she downloaded it.
Help? Please?
No Rifting for me until this is resolved :(
In my opinion: get AVAST with a free license on a side computer (http://www.avast.com/index (http://www.avast.com/index)) and install it. It'll do a scan as part of its install process with its current virus definition and hopefully get you yo a clean situation.
Quote from: Titia on March 30, 2011, 04:35:11 AM
In my opinion: get AVAST with a free license on a side computer (http://www.avast.com/index (http://www.avast.com/index)) and install it. It'll do a scan as part of its install process with its current virus definition and hopefully get you yo a clean situation.
My name is Wayena and I approve this message.
I've been using Avast for years.
Another thing I like to use is Spybot: Search and Destroy http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/)
Both are free and both are very effective.
Both Avast and Spybot are excellent choices. In fact, the few times I've gotten a virus I've run at least two different programs. The last time I used AVG, but then used Spybot and Malwarebytes, Malewarebytes picked up what AVG did not. Some viruses are pretty devious in that they will bury themselves in unusual places on your pc (last one I did was found in my MP3 file, I think), so be sure to scan the whole pc, and not just do a quick scan.
Can I install AVAST or spybot from a cd or USB ? Because there isn't any Internet to be had on the infected computer.
For Avast, the full install can be downloaded then copies over via an USB key. The only thing is that you won't have the lastest virus definition but usually they refresh their binary upload every month or so, so it's not too old.
sorry for your troubles, lyri. Hope it all gets fixed. :smitten:
I have a question regarding spybot, when I run it and try to fix the problems, it tells me that I have to run it as an administrator. Not sure how to do that. I'm the only user on this computer.
I also endorse, in one fashion or another, the products and/or services mentioned in this thread and can offer little more that hasn't already been said.
Quote from: Noa on March 30, 2011, 03:50:16 PM
I have a question regarding spybot, when I run it and try to fix the problems, it tells me that I have to run it as an administrator. Not sure how to do that. I'm the only user on this computer.
If on Windows Vista or 7, Noa, try right-clicking your Spybot icon before launching it, and select "Run as Administrator".
First I had to figure out that foxfire wouldn't allow me to save an executable file to my h/d or any other drive. Remembered that IE would, so got spybot saved to the memory stick.
Accessed memory stick from infected computer and double clicked to run it.
No go.
what??
I don't think so. I'm a GamerGirl!
Right clicked...low and behold! 'run'
Ha!
Spybot immediately d/l'd and within moments of hitting the scan button, it had the malware by the throat.
Took a while to scan the entire computer, but once it did the ole 'fix' rid me of that nasty bug.
I'm back up and running! YAY!
I'm running AVAST as I type and will d/l AVG and rerun that for security stuff.
YAYAYAYAY.
So here's something I'd love your further advice upon....
I've been having 'redirects' whenever I click on a google return...not every time, just random enough to be annoying but not enough to make me do something.
Could those redirects be part of the problem? And if so, why didn't AVG catch it? And if AVG won't catch it, will Spybot and/or AVAST ?
I've had that in the past as well. It's a virus/trojan/bug that's causing it. I'm not sure exaclty what, since they tend to rename themselves after the get into your system to something totally random, but the combination of all these programs SHOULD take care of it.
Oh look, I did a little research! Yay me.
Quote
If you are being redirected to an unwanted website or another search engine, your browser is not only hijacked by a Trojan, but the computer is also infected with a TDL3 rootkit as well. This threat is also known as the TDSS or Alureon rootkit. Many anti-malware vendors have failed to detect and prevent the infection in the past months, but to date, the latest variant of TDL3 rootkit is possible to remove using several tools and malware removal programs
Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/internet/google/articles/66090.aspx#ixzz1I95ksn4n (http://www.brighthub.com/internet/google/articles/66090.aspx#ixzz1I95ksn4n)
The suggested malware removal program that I would go with is this one: Malwarebytes
http://www.malwarebytes.org/ (http://www.malwarebytes.org/)
And another one in case the other miss: Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoft.com/ (http://www.lavasoft.com/)). You now have pretty much all the major players in the thread :)
>.> what they said <.< ... really though , I run with just Avast on this system and I have yet to hit any problems. The others sound like a good precaution though with kids , my oldest son keeps managing to change my homepage to random stuff like youtube or something odd. Think he even does it by accident is the funny thing.
Malware found some things wrong, but ultimately it did not catch the redirect. Just happened moments ago to me and I ran Malware this morning.
Had a bit of a scare. Ran Malware, then restarted the computer as requested. When it started back up again, it hung at the blue screen. A Very Long Time. I hard shut it down and restarted. It restarted normally, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
SoooOOooooOOooooooOooo.
I don't know if the issue was the stubborn malware program lodged on my computer or if it was something else.
But I"m going to back up all my files before trying Ad Aware.
Out of date, but was the best in its time
http://www.greyknight17.com/spyware.php (http://www.greyknight17.com/spyware.php)
I found out about a few other resources and used them, namely:
ATF - which cleaned out all my temporary files etc (deleted them)
Microsoft malicious software removal - found nothing
and
Eset.
I think I am most impressed with Eset. Eset found five. One was a Java malware that I'd had for MONTHs. The second I saw that on its list I said OH. Every single time I restarted my computer, this Java thing would pop up telling me I had to reinstall it. So I would. Every time. It was absolutely annoying. The second Eset told me Java was malware, I knew exactly what it was talking about.
Eset also found 3 threats in my word documents, one in my registry for something 32.
All of these malwares managed to hide from every other software I have run on my computer.
Another amazing thing? Eset uninstalled itself after I used it.
I got rid of Avast because it didn't find a thing. Microsoft's tool didn't seem to install anywhere I could find it, or it would be gone as well.
Next time I run these (which will be soon, as I plan to make running these programs a routine. I've lost all faith in AVG --sigh--) I will start with Eset. If it finds everything and none of the other programs find anything, I'm uninstalling the others and just using Eset.
Highly recommend it: http://www.eset.com/online-scanner (http://www.eset.com/online-scanner)
Here is hoping, after all this effort, I've got it completely figured out for my desktop. Because Eset found errors in my documents, I need to wipe my back up drive and resave all my documents, etc. Is there a safe way to delete those files w/o inviting the malware back onto my system? In order to access the files, I have to open the drive from somewhere.
Maybe I'll open it on one of the children's computers as I need to run these programs on them as well. /hm
Grr. Redirects STILL happening.
/grumps
Happily, the Java problem is gone.
I'm getting close to just wiping the entire hard drive. But I don't really want to :(
Check out the link I posted. He mentions some important things like going from safe mode.
Because things can avoid being deleted otherwise.