New Worst Virus Ever.
apathetically Update: I finally got it reformatted. I had to flash the bios, then I had some hardware problems with the video cards(s) (apparently it doesn’t like having 3 of them in the machine) anyway.. I got it working again. I also learned a valuable lesson: if you work at home, have separate work and personal computers. I’m going to buy a new mac on Friday when Leopard comes out, cuz they look fun. Anybody had any experience with parallels? Does it work?
Update: The virus is called the Smitfraud virus, and I’m still unable to completely remove it. I probably need to reformat, but the backup time for the data I want is currently at about 2 days according to windows to transfer over to my portable hard drive.
Wow. After letting somebody (who won’t be named) visit a website called BuddyPic.com, I found myself infected with the worst virus ever!
Here’s what it did:
- Deleted some .dll files from my anti virus
- Added 12 browser helpers
- Deleted all my system restore points
- Disabled access to task manager
- Took away my ability to install new software
- Installed 144 different trojans / spyware programs – avast was going off every 15 seconds
- Connected to about 15 bot networks
- used up all my memory
- changed my desktop background
I’m still working to remove it. It’s taken up most of my morning so far. I’d love to reformat but there’s so much stuff I need to get off first, it might be quicker to remove the virus than to backup everything.
I also didn’t think firefox was succeptable to such exploits. The only thing I can think of is that the webpage somehow put itself into my trusted sites.
If the buddypic.com people read this, you’ve got some really malicious advertising. Anybody else reading this, please avoid buddypic.com like the plague.
October 24th, 2007
