Computer virus?

[hkusp1]

1. Is not an option
2. Is the answer

 

[chris211]

Try:

1) quit looking at online porn;

You racist!!

 

[AKM]

yeah this is all gibberish to me

 

[winchster]

Try:

1) quit looking at online porn;
2) buy an apple

1. Is not gonna happen
2. Right after hell freezes over. Lol

Seriously, just run a virtual machine and do regular snapshots. Then, you can time travel at will and not have to do the "nuke from orbit" thing. Especially if you save a copy of the VM on an external.

 

[SIG_Fiend]

1. Is not gonna happen
2. Right after hell freezes over. Lol

Seriously, just run a virtual machine and do regular snapshots. Then, you can time travel at will and not have to do the "nuke from orbit" thing. Especially if you save a copy of the VM on an external.

I've played around with VMWare before and running VM's. At the time (a few years ago), I found that it was too memory intensive and offered substandard performance. I often have a dozen windows open, sometimes with a few of those having 20-30 tabs open at a time. IIRC, I think I've seen my Firefox memory usage creep up to over 1.5-1.8gb before... I love the concept, but the reality of what I tried at that time left a little to be desired. Any recommendations? I think a VM specifically for any internet usage is a great idea.

 

[winchster]

I've played around with VMWare before and running VM's. At the time (a few years ago), I found that it was too memory intensive and offered substandard performance. I often have a dozen windows open, sometimes with a few of those having 20-30 tabs open at a time. IIRC, I think I've seen my Firefox memory usage creep up to over 1.5-1.8gb before... I love the concept, but the reality of what I tried at that time left a little to be desired. Any recommendations? I think a VM specifically for any internet usage is a great idea.

PM sent

 

[SIG_Fiend]

Well thanks to the talk with Winchster today, I think I'm going to get set back up running a VM or 2 (or 3 LOL) with VMWare here in the near future. It's been several years since I've used it, and thinking back on it I realized I had an older PC at the time, running XP, much older hardware, and I think it's very likely I never set it up properly. With my new hardware (Intel i7, W7 x64, 8gb ram, etc.), and with the improvements in the software as well as with some better attention to detail on my part, I think things will be night and day. Thanks Steve for kicking me in the butt to get back to VMWare and do things the easy way!

 

[Gilgondorin]

Ohhhh LORD... Where to start? *rubbing bridge of nose*

Let's see. There's two many things to quote all at once so I'll address them as they come to memory from skimming this thread.

1.) Good Anti-Virus: To begin, if you're a serious internet user then you'll need Anti-Virus. Duh. The best possible FREE Anti-Virus you can get (2011 and 2012 rankings) is AVG Free Edition. It scored consistently better than ALL other free editions, and several of the pay-for editions from other developers. The current reigning 2012 king of paid-for AVS is Kaspersky Anti-Virus -- whether it's because their labs are in Russia and Russia is the source of half of the world's viruses behind China MIGHT be the problem. Either way, they have a 100% effective removal/blocking rating in several major categories including Adware, Spyware, and Scareware, as well as the highest blocking score (mid-90's percentages) of Rootkits and Malware.

2.) My Virus Diagnostic: If I were to take an educated guess, your computer has been infected with a rootkit. For those of us that do not know what they are, rootkits are sneaky little bastards that sneak into your computer via a download, and once they're in they set up shop in your computer, giving themselves system administrator rights that trump your standard administrator rights. Once they have in effect given themselves 100% uncontested ownership of your system, they begin dumping a payload of trojans, viruses, adware, spyware, worms, and other malware into your C:/ program files folder. Random windows to porn sites and illegal Canadian pharmacies will pop up without you even doing anything, and ALL of your browser traffic will be forwarded to similar websites regardless of what you do, because your computer traffic is being routed to a rouge proxy server. You can delete all the malware on your system as much as you want, as many times as you want, but it will keep seeding more until you actually delete the progenitor of the infections, which is the rootkit itself. They are one of the hardest infections to treat because they sometimes infect and pass themselves off as your sensitive data. Scanning and deletion usually means fragging several key components of your computer's registry, making the entire OS permanently and irreparably unstable -- if you have any sensitive data onboard, you're definitely going to need to exfiltrate everything precious to you via USB drive that has been "vaccinated" against programs that auto-execute when plugged into a computer... Then scanning it several times with a good malware hunter.


3.) My Recommendations: Unfortunately for you, the options are limited if that's what's really the case, although it sounds familiar. Ad-Aware Pro is one of the best malware hunter-killer programs in existence... But it's not a full-fledged anti-virus suite. You'll need to copy (not cut and paste!) all of your personal data onto a USB drive, and then put it in a computer that has Ad-Aware installed in it and scan everything on the USB drive zealously. Then you must install Ad-Aware on the infected system itself, and set all settings to search every nook, cranny, dark corner, and hidey-hole on your system from top to bottom, so that it can find and kill the rootkit. Be aware that (as I said before) rootkits are works of the devil and will often damage your OS irreparably, so if you're too lazy to reinstall or you don't have a disk with which to do it from, then you'll have to take your chances with completing the scan (which may or may not complete successfully depending on the severity of the infection)

4.) My Recommendations (Con't): If you have not begun backing up your stuff like everyone has suggested on a weekly or monthly basis, you're definitely going to want to start now. Storage media are cheap; there should be no reason you don't have one or two copies of your stuff saved away for emergencies.

5.) Why crApple is not the answer: Simply put, the "mighty" have fallen. Apple used to beat you with their "Our OS doesn't get viruses!" claim when you browsed their Mac store. Recently a news report drew attention to the fact that they have (quietly) removed all such claims from their website, because of the rising number of viruses programmed specifically to work on Mac computers. If you manage to catch one, kiss everything on the computer goodbye, because the jerks that program Mac viruses usually take no prisoners when doing so, meaning EVERYTHING will be fragged. Besides.... Everyone in the computer using community laughs at Macs. Friends don't let friends wear speedos, ride mopeds, or use mac books.

6.) Alternatives to OSX that WON'T get you laughed at: For what it's worth, Linux is (in my humble opinion) a far smarter alternative to OSX. In fact, a lot of people won't even use Windows if they can help it. The development process Linux undergoes, ensures that any security flaws present in the code will usually be found and fixed so that they cannot be exploited again. Where Microsoft and Apple program their operating systems confidentially in the interest of keeping trade secrets, Linux-based operating systems are 100% free, and open-source (anybody on the planet can look at the code themselves and check for bugs, security weaknesses, etc). I don't think I'd even want to know what websites a person was on, if they could catch a Linux compatible virus (Windows and OSX viruses cannot by their very programming even remotely harm a Linux system because of compatibility errors).

6.) Who the hell is this "Gilgondorin" person coming in and rambling at me!? I joined up on this forum a long time ago, but fell into inactivity because I migrated to another forum. I decided to check out the scene here again, and gravitated to this sub-board because I'm an IT student, and like helping others who aren't technical nerds like I am.

 

[keith_tx]

Ohhhh LORD... Where to start? *rubbing bridge of nose*

Let's see. There's two many things to quote all at once so I'll address them as they come to memory from skimming this thread.

1.) Good Anti-Virus: To begin, if you're a serious internet user then you'll need Anti-Virus. Duh. The best possible FREE Anti-Virus you can get (2011 and 2012 rankings) is AVG Free Edition. It scored consistently better than ALL other free editions, and several of the pay-for editions from other developers. The current reigning 2012 king of paid-for AVS is Kaspersky Anti-Virus -- whether it's because their labs are in Russia and Russia is the source of half of the world's viruses behind China MIGHT be the problem. Either way, they have a 100% effective removal/blocking rating in several major categories including Adware, Spyware, and Scareware, as well as the highest blocking score (mid-90's percentages) of Rootkits and Malware.

2.) My Virus Diagnostic: If I were to take an educated guess, your computer has been infected with a rootkit. For those of us that do not know what they are, rootkits are sneaky little bastards that sneak into your computer via a download, and once they're in they set up shop in your computer, giving themselves system administrator rights that trump your standard administrator rights. Once they have in effect given themselves 100% uncontested ownership of your system, they begin dumping a payload of trojans, viruses, adware, spyware, worms, and other malware into your C:/ program files folder. Random windows to porn sites and illegal Canadian pharmacies will pop up without you even doing anything, and ALL of your browser traffic will be forwarded to similar websites regardless of what you do, because your computer traffic is being routed to a rouge proxy server. You can delete all the malware on your system as much as you want, as many times as you want, but it will keep seeding more until you actually delete the progenitor of the infections, which is the rootkit itself. They are one of the hardest infections to treat because they sometimes infect and pass themselves off as your sensitive data. Scanning and deletion usually means fragging several key components of your computer's registry, making the entire OS permanently and irreparably unstable -- if you have any sensitive data onboard, you're definitely going to need to exfiltrate everything precious to you via USB drive that has been "vaccinated" against programs that auto-execute when plugged into a computer... Then scanning it several times with a good malware hunter.


3.) My Recommendations: Unfortunately for you, the options are limited if that's what's really the case, although it sounds familiar. Ad-Aware Pro is one of the best malware hunter-killer programs in existence... But it's not a full-fledged anti-virus suite. You'll need to copy (not cut and paste!) all of your personal data onto a USB drive, and then put it in a computer that has Ad-Aware installed in it and scan everything on the USB drive zealously. Then you must install Ad-Aware on the infected system itself, and set all settings to search every nook, cranny, dark corner, and hidey-hole on your system from top to bottom, so that it can find and kill the rootkit. Be aware that (as I said before) rootkits are works of the devil and will often damage your OS irreparably, so if you're too lazy to reinstall or you don't have a disk with which to do it from, then you'll have to take your chances with completing the scan (which may or may not complete successfully depending on the severity of the infection)

4.) My Recommendations (Con't): If you have not begun backing up your stuff like everyone has suggested on a weekly or monthly basis, you're definitely going to want to start now. Storage media are cheap; there should be no reason you don't have one or two copies of your stuff saved away for emergencies.

5.) Why crApple is not the answer: Simply put, the "mighty" have fallen. Apple used to beat you with their "Our OS doesn't get viruses!" claim when you browsed their Mac store. Recently a news report drew attention to the fact that they have (quietly) removed all such claims from their website, because of the rising number of viruses programmed specifically to work on Mac computers. If you manage to catch one, kiss everything on the computer goodbye, because the jerks that program Mac viruses usually take no prisoners when doing so, meaning EVERYTHING will be fragged. Besides.... Everyone in the computer using community laughs at Macs. Friends don't let friends wear speedos, ride mopeds, or use mac books.

6.) Alternatives to OSX that WON'T get you laughed at: For what it's worth, Linux is (in my humble opinion) a far smarter alternative to OSX. In fact, a lot of people won't even use Windows if they can help it. The development process Linux undergoes, ensures that any security flaws present in the code will usually be found and fixed so that they cannot be exploited again. Where Microsoft and Apple program their operating systems confidentially in the interest of keeping trade secrets, Linux-based operating systems are 100% free, and open-source (anybody on the planet can look at the code themselves and check for bugs, security weaknesses, etc). I don't think I'd even want to know what websites a person was on, if they could catch a Linux compatible virus (Windows and OSX viruses cannot by their very programming even remotely harm a Linux system because of compatibility errors).

6.) Who the hell is this "Gilgondorin" person coming in and rambling at me!? I joined up on this forum a long time ago, but fell into inactivity because I migrated to another forum. I decided to check out the scene here again, and gravitated to this sub-board because I'm an IT student, and like helping others who aren't technical nerds like I am.

I use AVG myself. It's fairly reliable.

+1 for Linux mention, but in all honesty if you're doing anything outside of basic stuff (e.g. you're a hardcore gamer) you might have some challenges with it, though you can usually get Wine to run most anything with some level of compatibility.

But why the Mac hatin'? Yes, there are some known viruses on OSX. There are 1000x more on Windows. The Windows viruses might not destroy your rig, but they will destroy your bank account if they have a simple keylogger and you visit your online bank. I'd rather lose the machine for a few hours.

I've been a Windows and a full on Microsoft development guy for 12 years, but Macs and OSX are pretty solid pieces of hardware / software. I use one for some iOS development (more hobby than professional dev on iOS) and if anyone thinks they're gonna laugh at me for that..well, my other hobby is shootin'.

 

[jtriron]

Try:

1) quit looking at online porn;
2) buy an apple