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F**k you, virus!
One of my friends has Facebook account hijacked last night, and his account started sending virus links out to everyone on his friends list, including me. I sent him a text to tell him what was happening, and advised him to change his password, which he did. He also told me he was having some weird pop-ups (one of those damned fake antivirus programs), and his legitimate scanner (McAfee, if that qualifies as legitimate anymore) had expired. He's with Comcast, so I let him know that they had recently switched the antivirus they provide to their customers for free from McAfee to Norton. I was never a big fan of Norton, but this latest version doesn't look half bad. I might have to try it out if I ever get tired of Avast.
A few hours later, I got similar messages from the guy's wife. If it wasn't for the god-awful spelling, I might have fallen for it. It said something like, "You were really drunk in this video." I happened to be out with the two of them Friday night, she had her camera, and I got pretty hammered. Thankfully, it wasn't like the time I fell for "Are these your pictures?" I told her what was going on, and gave her a link for Malwarebytes. She had trouble figuring out what to do, so she let me remote into her machine. It found the "Koobface" virus and removed it. After that, everything was fine, but I advised her to change her password just to be safe.
Today I got another call from her. My first thought was, her computer was screwed up again. Turned out it wasn't hers, but her one friend's computer, who was sending out the same sort of messages on Facebook. She was on her friend's computer, so I sent her the link for Malwarebytes again, figuring she'd know what to do this time. Unfortunately, the page wouldn't come up. Apparently something was blocking it. So she had me remote into her friend's computer.
First thing I did was checked to see if the Hosts file had been hijacked. There was one entry there, nothing having to do with the link I had sent. So I transfered the file to myself on the other computer and installed it. It installed just fine, but refused to run. I never saw this before, but I had heard about malware that checked for removal tools and prevented them from running. A quick glance showed me that there was more than just that one virus on there. I also knew that sometimes you could get around it by renaming the executable, so I went in and renamed it to "fuckyou", partly out of frustration, and much to the amusement of my friend and her friend. Thankfully, that worked, and a few minutes later, the virus was gone.
Like my friends, she was also running with an expired McAfee, but also like them, she was on Comcast. So I installed Norton and removed McAfee, did a quick scan (turned up clean), and changed the name of the "fuck you" file, as they called it, back to the original.
I need a vacation...
A few hours later, I got similar messages from the guy's wife. If it wasn't for the god-awful spelling, I might have fallen for it. It said something like, "You were really drunk in this video." I happened to be out with the two of them Friday night, she had her camera, and I got pretty hammered. Thankfully, it wasn't like the time I fell for "Are these your pictures?" I told her what was going on, and gave her a link for Malwarebytes. She had trouble figuring out what to do, so she let me remote into her machine. It found the "Koobface" virus and removed it. After that, everything was fine, but I advised her to change her password just to be safe.
Today I got another call from her. My first thought was, her computer was screwed up again. Turned out it wasn't hers, but her one friend's computer, who was sending out the same sort of messages on Facebook. She was on her friend's computer, so I sent her the link for Malwarebytes again, figuring she'd know what to do this time. Unfortunately, the page wouldn't come up. Apparently something was blocking it. So she had me remote into her friend's computer.
First thing I did was checked to see if the Hosts file had been hijacked. There was one entry there, nothing having to do with the link I had sent. So I transfered the file to myself on the other computer and installed it. It installed just fine, but refused to run. I never saw this before, but I had heard about malware that checked for removal tools and prevented them from running. A quick glance showed me that there was more than just that one virus on there. I also knew that sometimes you could get around it by renaming the executable, so I went in and renamed it to "fuckyou", partly out of frustration, and much to the amusement of my friend and her friend. Thankfully, that worked, and a few minutes later, the virus was gone.
Like my friends, she was also running with an expired McAfee, but also like them, she was on Comcast. So I installed Norton and removed McAfee, did a quick scan (turned up clean), and changed the name of the "fuck you" file, as they called it, back to the original.
I need a vacation...
I havn't messed with computers much in the past year since I graduated. When you said host file i was like ??? then it hit me, Used to have fun with that. Blocking google or better yet redirecting it to a shock site, of course with vista/windows 7 I hate how everything is hard to find anymore, Hell it a chore just to change power settings, well outside of typing power settings into the search bar but it really would be nice to know where it was located
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