Virus Attack

Technology and Gaming
#1

I have no idea what I did.

I turned on my computer Sunday night after having it off the entire weekend. I was surprised when a lot of my Google searches were redirected to dubious websites. Then Monday, Symantec (Yeah, I know it sucks, but the university network process apparently found issue with TrendMicro… :frowning: ) detected some viruses present on the computer. I can’t remember what the viruses were specifically, but whenever I deleted a certain file, it would pop back up. Today became more troubling as a new virus came into play, a trojan backdoor, which again I could quarantine and delete, with a new one to replace it.

I downloaded Microsoft Security Essentials, only to find the same immortal issues present (unknown if related, but the scan seemed to hang A LOT and whenever it found the backdoor trojan[win32.backdoor, if I remember correctly], I would get a report of virus protection being deactivated, with the simultaneous message that the file was deleted…only to be found again on a rescan). Did a system restore, and found the virus was still present and had now changed my proxy settings. I’m now conducting a system restore from a point farther back, middle of last week.

In case that does not work, what advice do y’all have for me?

#2

Usually, when you’re redirected (assuming you’re on a Windows computer), something fucked with your HOSTS file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc) though it could be more exotic. Check that (if you haven’t already).

Beyond that, Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-aware, AVG (others might be able to suggest other packages). If’n those don’t work, they will at least point you in the right direction for identifying the name of the virus you might have and you can search for a proprietary piece of software made solely for removing that type of virus.

My sorta-helpful advice…

#3

I was about to quote Wierd Al.

#4

System Restore seemed to fix it…I’ll post back if it returns.

#5

Usually for me, a virus = backup, format, reinstall. Problem fixed every time. Viruses have a way of digging themselves in deep and never coming out.

#6

Yep seconded, I use ubuntu live CD to back up everything (choose “try ubuntu without making a change to my computer” option when booting) as you can mount any hard drive and transfer any content safely and quickly over to an external drive.

Then do a full format of the drive and reinstall windows. It’s probably a good idea to create an image of the drive once you have everything set up how you want it. If you are on windows 7 it has it’s own disk imaging software, if not try Clonezilla.

#7

I know how you feel man; I had this virus once that would flood the root folder of my C:\ drive with .tmp files every time you deleted them. I eventually had to get my brother to help get rid of it.
I still don’t know where I got it from.

#8

pr0n?

#9

That’s why anti-virus usually recommends quarantining the trojans and stuff rather than deleting them. When things are deleted, the don’t actually get erased, it stays on the computer until overwritten, or so I’ve heard, (I’m not entirely sure about this process,) which is why they simply stop the program from being able to do anything by moving it to a quarantine folder.

#10

Yeah, well, would have been nice if my antivirus (McAfee at the time, so no surprises there) had detected it.
And it wasn’t pr0n, I was, like 12 at the time.

#11

it would seem an antivirus/spyware actually STARTED the problem with me. adaware detected something and removed it. upon reboot, i have had ‘issues’. yeah, the virus/spyware was a problem, but the actual removal made my system a brick. I am still trying to figure out how to get back to good.

#12

Follow these instructions.

#13

I’ve had that happen to me on Starcraft 2. All I did was run one of those painfully long AVAST! computer scans. It found about 3 viruses and when I was done deleting them, they were gone perminitally oppose to them popping up like they did. Usually one virus spawns fake ones and you end up deleting those instead of the real one.

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