Nice editorial about spyware for Joe Public

[cjolley]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/21/opinion/meyer/main613079.shtml

chuck

[The PIT]

I like his claim that despite not downloading anything he was riddled with spyware and trojans. They normally go hand in hand with the click anywhere syndrome and download that nice birdie with big titties and that nice search toolbar.
Spyware is getting as bad a virus/trojans and worms for knackering peoples pc's.
Another programme that tends to very common on diseased machines is Kazaa. Thats one programme I remove striaght away from students and staff pc's.

[Tjalfe]

I just gave up batteling Coolwebs SearchX variant this morning and reinstalled windows. I ran Adaware, Spybot 1.3RC3, NAV2K4.. they all found the .dll file it created in the system32 dir, but even when the system was deemed clean, a reboot later, it was back.. WWindows XP Pro, all patches and servicepacks as of yesterday.. it is really nasty stuff

[The PIT]

Took me one day to remove all the spyware and four virus from one machine. The big problem was the browser hijack which killed Microsoft web site and a few anti spyware sites.
If you fired up Windoze update you see and did ctl alt del you would see one process running called unknown. The same if you went to microsoft.com. This was windoze 98. I downloaded a process viewer and that didn't even list it.
After a bit more registry editing everything suddenly worked. Sadly I'm not sure what the fix was.
Downloaded the remaining windoze updates rebooted several times and ran.

[Greebe]

I like this part...

I have a pop-up blocker, a firewall and never download anything.

LOL what an idiot

[DentyCracker]

CWSHREDDER dude

Originally posted by tjalfe
I just gave up batteling Coolwebs SearchX variant this morning and reinstalled windows. I ran Adaware, Spybot 1.3RC3, NAV2K4.. they all found the .dll file it created in the system32 dir, but even when the system was deemed clean, a reboot later, it was back.. WWindows XP Pro, all patches and servicepacks as of yesterday.. it is really nasty stuff

Didja try cwshredder?
or hijaak pro?

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Greebe
I like this part...



LOL what an idiot

I think he's lying. Bet theres loads of pron on his machine.

[Tjalfe]

Re: CWSHREDDER dude

Originally posted by DentyCracker
Didja try cwshredder?
or hijaak pro?

Yeah.. CWS shredder found it, deleted it and it was right back after a reboot.. Spybot 1.3RC3 told me as soon as I fired up IE that the registry was being changed and the homepage, default search engine and a few other things were being changed to that of CWS.Searchx
I did not try HiJaack Pro.. can't say I had heard of it till now.. reinstalled windows on the computer, so I can't tell if it would have worked. I kept a copy of the DLL it used as well the some 10 registry entries pointed to that dll.