Viruses

[itschris]

You know, I'd really like to meet up with any person associated with creating viruses. I don't know what I would do to them.

Saturday, I somehow clicked something that started, of all things, an antivirus program that started running. I couldn't turn it off. It acted like a legit program putting an icon in my system tray and everything. Now, everything I click tells me it's infected. I have no internet access and my antivirus software and malware softwared can't even run. I tried running in windows safe mode, which did allow me to run my antivirus softward, but it didn't find anything.

After about 2 hours... I gave up. I'm going to do some research to see if there's any known fixes... but it's not like I have the time or energy to spend another afternoon f-ing with this nonesense. It just pisses me off.

The bogus software is called Antispyware Soft. If you happen to know anyone associated with them, tell them I'm coming.

 

[billy p]

I feel your pain. I had a infection once and it crippled my system. It was using my IP to send out spam which inundated my email account to the extent my sevice provider threatened to shut me down...untill I had it repaired. Needless to say sure sounds like you'll need some expert advice...good luck!

Bill....

 

[gene]

I got this virus about 2 weeks ago. It took me nearly 2 days to completely remove it. It was no joke. Definitely the worst I've ever encountered.

Make sure you are always running Microsoft Security Essentials. Its FREE and is a great program!

 

[lsiberian]

You know, I'd really like to meet up with any person associated with creating viruses. I don't know what I would do to them.

Saturday, I somehow clicked something that started, of all things, an antivirus program that started running. I couldn't turn it off. It acted like a legit program putting an icon in my system tray and everything. Now, everything I click tells me it's infected. I have no internet access and my antivirus software and malware softwared can't even run. I tried running in windows safe mode, which did allow me to run my antivirus softward, but it didn't find anything.

After about 2 hours... I gave up. I'm going to do some research to see if there's any known fixes... but it's not like I have the time or energy to spend another afternoon f-ing with this nonesense. It just pisses me off.

The bogus software is called Antispyware Soft. If you happen to know anyone associated with them, tell them I'm coming.

Just use the restore feature of Windows in safe mode. It's under the Control Panel. That should knock out anything you got. I got one of these last week and restore knocked it out like a charm.

 

[itschris]

This is what I got. It seems pretty straightforward to remove, but it's just a pain. I started leaving my laptop at the office and I just remote into it from home which is a whole lot faster than using VPN. I had a ton of work to do so I had to come into the office on Sunday. It's bad enough I have to work on the weekends, but to actually have to be at the office? I can do without that.

http://www.removevirus.org/remove-antispyware-soft.html

 

[itschris]

What really irritates me is that I have Sophos antivirus software at home... we have to use that because of connecting to office resources and I have a malware software setup and this stupid think just blew right by both.

Gene: I'm not sure if I'm running that or not... I'll give that a shot.

Isi-b: I tried using restore once before when I had a trojan virus and it didn't work. I'm running XP, does that make a difference?

 

[lsiberian]

What really irritates me is that I have Sophos antivirus software at home... we have to use that because of connecting to office resources and I have a malware software setup and this stupid think just blew right by both.

Gene: I'm not sure if I'm running that or not... I'll give that a shot.

Isi-b: I tried using restore once before when I had a trojan virus and it didn't work. I'm running XP, does that make a difference?

Yeah it does. The Vista/7 restore are much more powerful, but you must always run the restore from safe mode without networking.

Other possibilities include running the antivirus while disabling explorer.exe, but those types of approaches are usually crippled these days.

Windows is like swiss cheese with exploits. It doesn't take much to get through. Anti-virus isn't all the helpful against hijackers. Which is what fake anti-virus is.

 

[Rickster71]

With many of these Trojans they are also hidden in the restore, so you''ll end up re-infecting yourself.
This helped me a lot, and it's free. http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Chris, Good luck

 

[GlocksRock]

Malwarebytes is awesome, I've used it before with great success.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Always keep a current backup of important programs and files and do a clean reformat when this type of stuff occurs.

 

[itschris]

I have Matwarebytes, bought and paid for, but it didn't work. From what I've read, you gotta go in SAFE mode with networking, do something with the proxy deal, then run Malwarebytes. I have the instructions printed out. I also have a manual way to clear it as well.

It's just a waste of my time. I hate these people. There should be zero tolerance and the harshest of penalties for those who do this kind of thing. It's a crime of arrogance which I have zero tolerance for.

 

[GlocksRock]

I agree... why can't these people put their skills to a productive use, instead of being counterproductive.

 

[itschris]

I agree... why can't these people put their skills to a productive use, instead of being counterproductive.

Yeah seriously. Clearly they're not stupid people. I'll never understand the mentality that enables someone to just arbitrarily do things like that. I mean don't want to bad things to anyone or even annoy anyone... unless of course I'm wronged in some way first.

What makes a person pull up the someone's home and break in and take things that don't belong to them? I don't get it. That sort of thing to me is worse than two people who get into an argument that escalates and escalates until someone snaps. At least you can understand sort of and see how it can happen. Stealing and other malicious behavior is the worst in my book. It's calm conscience choice and that makes it espcially wrong in my book.

If people would just spend half the amount of effort they do trying to cheat the system, their neighbor, and everyone else, it's likely they'd find their life in a much better place having most of the things they're willing to take from someone else in the first place.

 

[lsiberian]

Catching them is very hard and many are from overseas. Teenagers are also the source of many of these type of things.

 

[Tomorrow]

Two out of the last three days I've logged in here, I've received a highly dangerous trojan attack (I informed a mod). Fortunately, my antivirus ID'ed it and killed it.

 

[s162216]

Although this is not a very well known program, try using "Smitfraudfix"

Although its intended primarily to remove the very nasty and extremely difficult to remove virus/spyware "Smitfraud" and its variants, its also very effective at removing other stuff. Its freeware as well and I have used it many times very effectively.

Get it here:

http://siri.geekstogo.com/SmitfraudFix.php

Like the pictures show it runs in the command line view, basically go into safe mode, double click the "smitfraudfix" icon and when the command line interface comes up, press any key like it says. Next press '1' to search for any problems and then even if nothing comes up, press '2' for it to search and destroy.

Hope this helps

 

[10010011]

The easiest way to avoid this type of exploit is to stop using Internet Explorer.

 

[tonygeno]

The easiest way to avoid this type of exploit is to stop using Internet Explorer.

Or get a Mac. I haven't run antivirus software in years.

 

[TLS Guy]

The easiest way to avoid this type of exploit is to stop using Internet Explorer.

Yes, NEVER using Internet explorer is job one!

 

[10010011]

Or get a Mac. I haven't run antivirus software in years.

Me either on my Linux boxes, but I have software for work that has no Linux or MacOS equivalent, and I like to play games too.