Malware creators SUCK!!!!

[danceswithgary]

I am scrupulous in keeping my antivirus definitions up-to-date, I have my NAV scans scheduled and run them diligently, I don't click on random sites and I STILL ended up with a vicious Trojan installed. I've now spent almost 16 hours trying to get the damn thing cleaned off my laptop. I'm currently on Gary's looking up everything I can. Guess it's a good thing he's still off riding around the country. I have my writing backed up to my flash drive - including what I was working on when I detected the problem but, needless to say, I'm not feeling terribly inspired.

Do you know how many different anti-spyware/malware programs are out there? A lot - and none of them work on everything. The gurus have you run three or four of them to try to catch anything that falls through the cracks. Appalling.

I'm just hoping I don't have to do a full restore because I will lose at least some of my screencaps because an 8GB flash drive isn't going to hold everything and if I go out to buy another one then I'll expose myself to a different kind of virus and MY hard drive isn't as easy to clean. *sigh*

Comments

[sussixer.livejournal.com]

I agree, it takes forever to clean up the mess that a ten second accident makes sometimes.

THe best malware cleaner and preventer I found out there is A-Squared. You can get a free copy or the whole shabang for a free 30 day trial, no card required, and if you like keep it for something like 30 bucks.

I like it cause it not only does scans and cleaning but it also tells you if a site contains anything suspicious, how threatening it is, and lets you choose a security block for that ip/address for future autoblocking, all before the page loads completely so nothing dings you.

[danceswithgary]

Thanks, I'm currently running a deep scan with a-squared, hopefully that will take care of things. Considering all the blocks I already have set in NAV, Windows Defender and Firefox, I'm appalled that the malware made it through.

[sussixer.livejournal.com]

those sneaky malware bastards. ;)

[rhodes10.livejournal.com]

Yep, I hate them.

[danceswithgary]

They should all lose their own systems. :-(

you have my pity :(

[ender24]

I once got a rootkit thing on my old laptop (that was over 3 years ago) , and it was hopeless to get rid of it.
thanks heaven, I had an image made on my external harddrive, so nothing vital was lost, but still urgggggggggggg.

sighs for you.

Re: you have my pity :(

[danceswithgary]

So careful and they still got me. I just wish I knew where I picked it up but all I know is it happened between my last full scan on Tuesday and Friday. It was a very nasty variant of Trojan.win32.fakespyware.

[kontiki.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry to hear that your pc has succumbed to malware :-(

I work in a pc hostile environment - a university - and we run NAV, have firewalls, and stuff still makes it through. In order to catch most of what's coming through we have to run NAV (keeping the definition files up to date), MalWareBytes anti-malware located at http://www.malwarebytes.org (free for individuals), we update this daily also. Inaddition we run spyblaster by http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html and adware by http://www.lavasoft.com/. Both of these have free downloads for individuals. This only leaves us vulnerable to "click malware" like the virus called "antivirus 2009) that pops in and when you click on it (by accident) it loads a virus that you need a special down load to be able to remove it. ...and when it's really bad these need to be run while in safe mode on your pc.

Good Luck! (So happy to hear you were able to recover most of your current work).

[danceswithgary]

Thanks, it's good to hear those are good choices, but appalling that it takes four different pieces of software to be moderately safe. I plan to download and install all four on Gary's laptop now that everything is safely backed up on my flashdrive and will do the same on the new one.

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

Hey, I did the same as you with the virus protection, firewalls and such and I still wound up wiping the hard drive over 4 times in the last month and a half. I bought external hard drives for all my data to be stored on but restoring took up the most time over the weeks and I still haven't loaded all of the programs back in yet. I hate those people too!!

[danceswithgary]

It's horrible how paranoid I need to be - but they really are out to get us! :-/

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

Oh, how true is that. My brother keeps telling me I'm too paranoid, and I don't think I'm paranoid enough. I had like 3 different things going on the computer and I still got snagged.