Recently we’ve had an ad posted on the board that unfortunately linked to a website that had been compromised. This type of attack immediately loads a Trojan virus to the viewing computer…and things go haywire from there.

I’ve pulled the post and notified the owner so that they can remedy the situation.

This does bring up some important points about how you can protect yourself, and what to do if you find yourself the unhappy receiver of these little gems.

An absolute MUST for you to have, is a program called Malwarebytes. It is a scanner that finds and removes the ugly stuff from your system. It’s free (a definite plus) and is incredibly good at what it does. Download it, update it weekly, and keep it around as an insurance policy. Do it now. You can find it here:
http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html

Daily maintenance of your computer helps it run faster, cleans the ‘gunk’ out, and clears all of your history. An excellent, and free, program for this is Ccleaner. You can find it here:
http://www.piriform.com/

Anti-virus and Anti-Spyware software are different things. They target different types of attacks and malware (bad stuff). Usually the commercially available programs are resource hogs and really slow down your system. A good program (also free) is AVG Anti-virus. It can be found here:
http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
A very good Anti-spyware program, although not free, is CounterSpy. It can be found here:
http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/home-home-office/anti-spyware/


Now the really important part. What to do if you get hit with one of these viruses, worms, etc.

First thing is…don’t panic. It’s not the end of the world and is usually easily fixed.
Many times you can just use “system restore” and restore your computer to an earlier time. You should still scan afterward.
If you don’t have a restore point set…you’ll want to restart the computer in “safe mode”. The reason for this is that many of these viruses are smart enough to know when you are trying to remove them…and they shut down the cleaning tools you are trying to use….or shut down your system. To start in safe mode, with most systems, you simply tap the F8 key while it is restarting. Chose just the safe mode option and not “safe mode with networking”.
Now go into your system settings and turn OFF system restore. Many viruses will create a restore point, which saves the virus itself, on the computer. Turning off system restore removes all restore points. At this point you want to open and run your scanning tools. Run Malwarebytes first. Do a deep and not the quick scan. You will also want to run your anti-virus and anti-spyware software as well. Full scans also, and not the quick ones.

You can run these scans at the same time, but it will slow your system down to a crawl. It’s better to run one, let it find stuff, let it clean it, then run the other programs.
For good measure, when you have run all the programs…….run them again.
When the scan are done and you are sure that it's all clean....go back into system settings and turn "system restore" back on.
Yes, this takes time, but getting your system back is worth it.

These programs are free (or cheap) and are very easy to use. Clean the system weekly (daily is better) and run these programs if you get hit with something nasty. Then take the tons of money that some computer place would charge you to do the same exact thing….and buy something nice.

Have fun out there….and stay safe.

Just sayin’

-- Modified on 12/15/2010 10:04:58 AM