I really should have known better

[MadMike]

I can't believe this happened to me. I'm normally very careful. I got virused earlier.

One of my MSN contacts popped up, with a message asking me, "Are these your pictures", followed by a link. I clicked on it, not thinking anything of it, even when my firewall warned me that a new program was trying to access the internet. When no pictures came up, then I became suspicious.

First thing I did was tried to run MSCONFIG, which shut itself down immediately. Same thing with Hijack This. Tried going back to a restore point, and it was turned off.

Luckily, I was able to access those by going into safe mode. Hijack This showed me that several security-related websites were blocked in the hosts file. I cleaned those up, ran several scans, and removed the offending files, and everything seems OK now.

Just a reminder to everyone, be very careful if someone tries to send you a link or a file, even if you know them. They could be infected, and not know they're even sending it. From what I saw, it looks like this one was simply a nuisance, and not really dangerous, but it could have been much worse.

[technical.angel]

This is the biggest problem that I face here. Most students will just see the MSN or AIM window and click.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

This is the biggest problem that I face here. Most students will just see the MSN or AIM window and click.

I have that problem periodically with my brother's PC. He pays NO attention to what he's sending (anything from Jib-Jab, for example, Avast! won't open on Thunderbird) nor will he stop downloading all kinds of crap.

Beware of the screensavers and theme files, folks. Some of the older files especially have adware wrapped in with the installation program and can royally screw up your PC faster than you can blink.

An ounce of pretention is worth a pound of manure.

[technical.angel]

the screensavers... OoOo... I just had a staff member who almost had to have her computer wiped because of it. I was able to save the day with a mutitude of scans.

Rumor is that she's about to retire... not a moment too soon!

[draggar]

You're all lucky you can run other scans, my company ONLY allows us to use McCrappy and so many viruses can easily disable it, I don't even know why they use it.

They have SpyBot on their installation drive, but no one is allowed to install it. WTF??

[RichS]

One of my MSN contacts popped up, with a message asking me, "Are these your pictures", followed by a link.

...

Just a reminder to everyone, be very careful if someone tries to send you a link or a file, even if you know them. They could be infected, and not know they're even sending it.

You might want your contact to know what happened also - one common 'feature' of viruses/malware is to send the infected file to everyone in the infected computer owner's contact lists of messaging/email addresses.

And, hey, viruses happen to almost everyone. I got hit once by doing something stupid - I have a copy of Windows XP Pro before SP1. I did a reinstall, and, without thinking, went on the 'net to get drivers. Immediately got hit by MSBlaster. I had to reinstall all over again.

[sld72382]

You're all lucky you can run other scans, my company ONLY allows us to use McCrappy and so many viruses can easily disable it, I don't even know why they use it.

They have SpyBot on their installation drive, but no one is allowed to install it. WTF??

You company is probably like mine - restricting you to certain softwares (or in your case one software) because they don't want to get caught using unlicensed software and get sued.

[MadMike]

You might want your contact to know what happened also - one common 'feature' of viruses/malware is to send the infected file to everyone in the infected computer owner's contact lists of messaging/email addresses.

I did that as soon as I saw her sign back on. Turned out she already knew. Someone else infected her just as she infected me. She was trying to fix it, but was stuck because all the security sites she knew of were blocked. So I told her how to remove the entries from the hosts file, which was hopefully enough to get her started.

[Impetrix]

My, uh, friend, (really, honest... ) just did a stupid, too. This, uh, friend was downloading a game off a torrent, and the no-cd crack that came with it didn't work (turns out you needed to actually delete, not just rename, the original .exe... whatev), so, uh, *they* went to google to find a new crack, found one, ran it.... and boom.

Now, ahem, *their* dad is kinda pissed and has forbidden all illegal downloading, and *they* almost want to go back to college where friends have newsgroup subscriptions and direct connect hubs. Meh.