Wife's computer

[Quinn Inuit]

My wife's computer got pwned somehow this evening, so instead of catching up on posts I played whack-a-mole with Antivirus Live. It appears to be gone, but I'm watching things closely.

I just can't figure out how it got installed. From the timestamps, it appears to have downloaded the necessary bad files while we were eating dinner, but I don't know how long the installer was on her computer or what turned it on. The files were all in one of the random free trial copies of CakeMania 3 I warned her about downloading, but she downloaded and played that months ago and hasn't touched it since. If this were a different kind of malware I could see it hiding, but the Antivirus Live people make their money by being highly visible. It just doesn't make sense that it would intentionally hide for six months.

She's pretty well-protected, too. We're behind a router, and she's running a current version of Firefox with AdBlock+ and javascript disabled in Adobe Acrobat Reader. She only downloaded one file today (besides web pages and PDFs), and she opened that with AbiWord.

I'm also doing a MalwareBytes scan of my computer, to be on the safe side. Full scan. I have well over a dozen RTW/BI mods installed. This might take awhile.

[Irenaeus]

Yikes Quinn, good luck getting it sorted. Viruses are nasty things to get rid of. You didn't mention anything about a Firewall, so if you don't have one, then I'd recommend getting one.

Also, if you're having difficulty getting rid of it, then try a bootable anti-virus CD such as Kapersky or BitDefender (the latter is probably better as it downloads the latest definitions if you've got a wired internet connection), as these will will scan from entirely outside of Windows, so any virus never gets a chance to run.

[Carados]

It would be nice if computers actually worked properly for a change...

[Quinn Inuit]

The bootable virus scanner sounds like an excellent idea, thanks. I'm pretty sure I've killed it, but I'll double-check in a couple of days.

Oddly, the MalwareBytes scan found a keylogger on mine, but inside the uninstaller of MakeTorrent. I'm glad I never tried to uninstall it. (It was probably just a false positive, but you never know.)

We don't have software firewalls, but we use the router as a hardware firewall. I never really trust software firewalls.


Yeah, it would be nice. How's yours doing? Let me know if I can help any more with it.

[Caligula Caesar]

Ouch. I almost managed to destroy my computer with a virus a while back - a virus I got from looking at an internet page at the Org! That one got through BitDefender... Luckily, we managed to isolate and remove the problem...

[Sardaukar One]

Sounds like the virus the Cylons used in battlestar Galactica. That hid for a few weeks before striking.

[Caesar Augustus]

Bah, I loathe those who produce malware! Hope your wife's machine is fixed up again

[Quinn Inuit]

Thanks, me too.

CC: a page at the Org? Weird. Was it from a picture someone posted or something?

[Carados]

Mine is "fixed" again. But for some reason something is stopping me from connecting to the internet now. My dad has had a look and is completely baffled by it. Suppose this is what laptops are for. Unfortunately, the laptop is pretty bad so I can't viably work on stuff on here

[Caligula Caesar]

Actually, it was just a thread on all the possible CTDs you can encounter (though I have managed to find inventive ways to prove that the list is somewhat too short ). I've looked at it several times, but for some reason it opened a replica of a windows update/scannner there and strated scanning...

[Quinn Inuit]

Good luck with your desktop, Carados. I hope you get that sorted.

CC: I know that thread, and I think I may have even contributed something to it (that might've been here, though). I'm surprised you had that happen. Are you running AdBlock? That'll keep a lot of ad-related malware from running.