Viruses, Adware and general nasties

[Alexb111]

Not particularly gaming related except pc but I thought I'd share a nasty Trojan my mum picked up today on a random internet page.

Basically got in, installed a (what I assume is a scam) antivirus called Platinum Security essentials and de-activated all running programs (Including antivirus and anti-malware programs) except internet explorer.

The new antivirus then ran a fake scan saying there are 24 urgent threats. Upon clicking clear threats It asks you for bank details or paypal for a £80 charge to buy the full version of Platinum Security.

So, not falling for that bag of bull I start by trying to re-boot the original antivirus (Microsoft security) and uninstall the Platinum scam one.

Soon as I do that it picks up a 'critical error' (most probably generated by the Trojan) and repeatedly restarts the computer giving only a minute upon startup. Not being ones to give up my brother (bit of an IT nerd) and I messed with startup programs eventually resorting to booting up in safe mode to stop it. Ridiculously the Trojan had affected even safe mode so with no other option I removed the hard drive and connected it as a secondary to my own pc, running an antivirus from there cleared it.

Just wanted to share my astonishment that it managed to get so deep into windows 7 even with fairly solid security (Virus, adware and malware guards), first one I've encountered that's affected safe mode at any rate. Net result was victory but lost 4 hours and my patience.

Anyone else got any good stories they wanna share?

 

[Liam Porter]

Just out of curiosity, what Anti-Virus was she using? And what Anti-Virus did you use to remove it in the end?

 

[Alexb111]

Microsoft Security Essentials. Same one to protect and remove, problem is once it got in it blasted the antivirus apart and disabled it. It wouldn't even boot up.

Used the same program on my pc but got it to clean the Trojan in the secondary drive.

 

[Deva]

I've seen similar before, generally you can survive in safe mode if you run something like rkill and open antishutdown in time. Without that I had the restart in 60 secs, restart if you try and launch IE, restart if you try to delete temp files, restart for control panel, near enough anything. Sometimes it really is easiest to just grab the files you want and reinstall Windows. Not an option for some if you have loads of files though.

 

[Tariq]

system restore sometimes helps too

 

[Deva]

If that works you generally haven't got a very bad infection I seem to find a lot of the time the virus will spread into the restore folder anyway. I generally turn system restore off on anything I get my hands on. Waste of time.

 

[Tariq]

well no. But if something wipes your programs etc it sometimes works.

any infection is a bad infection

 

[Airsoft-Ed]

Y'see, this is the kinda sh*t people need to be told when they buy a PC, where do you all learn sh*t like this?

If I'd known half of this stuff, I'd have probably saved about £1500 on new laptops over the last 2 years and I'd have the confidence to buy a PC exclusively for gaming, without worrying that all my hard earned cash was just going to get butt raped by a virus after 2 weeks.

 

[Tariq]

Why not just re-install windows lol

New PC is OTT

 

[essexmerc]

normally when i get a virus that acts like this, i boot in to a live version of windows xp or linux and remove it that way

 

[Alexb111]

Well I find with a decent (and up to date) antivirus almost nothing gets through (first major issue in about 4/5 years now). The problem is that in the game of updating the viruses are winning with the antivirus programs always responding to new threats.

Its like a constant game of catchup, as soon as a new virus is released the antivirus makers work on combating it but in the time it takes to update the defence a few hundred or thousand people will be hit.

Oh and if you don't have an IT guru when things go wrong you may make them harder to fix, Im lucky I have my brother and watching him work has given me some (fairly limited) knowledge.

 

[lemon191]

easiest way is to have back up of all your files you want to keep on a usb hard drive and any problems just reinstall windows. nice and easy ! (although it does take a little time to catch up all the updates for programs and games etc) and windows always benefits from a reinstall every now and then anyway