Anyone here had do deal with "Antispyware Soft" virus?

[MysticLlama]

Originally Posted by LeeH

You can now say you've seen it happen on a machine running MSSE. I've had it running since the first time I got the virus.

Bummer. Had to happen eventually I suppose.

I think that it's got to actually be a group of programmers with how fast the stupid thing gets changed.

I've also noticed that it seems to happen less on machines with IE8, but that could be coincidence.

IE7/Firefox seem to be a toss up.

[stomachmonkey]

No.

[mikesride]

Wow I was lucky! Able to system restore then ran in safe mode and now know the next steps thanx to you guys!!!

[LeeH]

I ran Microsoft Security Essentials - after approximately six hours of scanning it found three files to delete. Upon reboot the virus immediately started back up again.

Started up in safe mode and ran Malwarebytes. It found four files to delete. Restart was normal... keeping my fingers crossed.

[GH85Carrera]

I tried to use the free stuff and found I was doing a lot of work keeping viruses away. I finally broke down and just bought Norton 360. I have seen it stop several attacks in it tracks. I went to a song lyric site and it was like a war between Norton and the virus. I finally shut down and rebooted. No sign of any problem.

I am sure the Norton haters will flame away. But Norton 360 has several features I really like. It does not seen to hog up the computer that much.

Now when I want to visit a lyric site I use Ubuntu on my netbook.

[LeeH]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I went to a song lyric site and it was like a war between Norton and the virus. I finally shut down and rebooted. No sign of any problem.

Interesting... I'm fairly sure both incidents of this virus came from song lyric web sites. I had Norton running for a while, but everything happened in slow motion on my computer.

[Aurel]

I had a similar problem with a virus called malware doctor. I think the best way to get rid of it is first to revert the operating system to a configuration previous the infection, then scan the HD with antivirus to make sure nothing remains. I used maleware bytes to get rid of the bugger.

[MysticLlama]

If you don't change programs to your computer too often, one of the things that I use in the production environments, where people are just supposed to be doing one thing is MS Steady State.

I don't know if it's available for Win7 yet, but basically, you tell it which folder(s) you put your documents in (only the exact folders, as this malware stuff sits deep in the user profile folders, so you don't want to tag the whole thing). and then when you reboot it kills everything that's been done.

So they can mess with the computer, install stuff they aren't supposed to, etc. etc., but a reboot just makes it all go away.

Kinda handy for something you use as just a browsing or typical office machine. Has a toggle to turn it off for doing updates / installing a new app.

I also hear lyrics websites come up a lot when this is a problem, weird.

[Super_Dave_D]

Man this sounds scarely bad!!! I run a Mac - do you think I should be concerned?

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Super_Dave_D

Man this sounds scarely bad!!! I run a Mac - do you think I should be concerned?

The day is coming. Now that Macs are more than couple of percent of the computers on the net the target will be ripe.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

The day is coming. Now that Macs are more than couple of percent of the computers on the net the target will be ripe.

Yeah, strange how there were hundreds of Mac viruses pre OS X when the installed base was much smaller but since the release of OS X a decade ago nothing in the wild.

Not impossible to write an OS X "virus", after all it's just code. Geting one to spread, propagate on it's own, a requirement to be considered a true virus, is extremely difficult.

The people that do this crap do it for the cred. For that reason alone Apple has been a target for years. Apple is pretty much the Holy Grail these days.

You can't tell me no one has tried it yet. That makes absolutely no sense.

The market share argument is lame.

[red-beard]

My wife did the wrong thing on a suspect website a few months ago, and I had to remove the mal software. It took malwarebytes plus deleting some specific files to kill it. The good news, a google search was helpful in killing it. But I had to run the search from a different browser.

[azasadny]

MalWareBytes - to clean up the infection
Microsoft Security Essentials - free, prevents *most" of these
Mozilla browser instead of IE