I have spent around four hours cleaning a pernicious piece of spyware from my laptop. Courtesy of allowing one person at MechaCon to check their MySpace profile. If I ever see them again, I just may slap them into next week for being such a freaking idiot when it comes to computers. I think four hours of my time is enough punishment for me, never again will anyone be allowed near my computers. Or they die.
As for the malicious piece of code, its called Outerinfo and if you aint watching it will install like a normal program. However it goes rooting through your computer and your anti-virus will scream about a downloader. It seemed Norton stopped the files, but as I said Outerinfo installed itself on the XP laptop and then everytime Internet Explorer opened, a pop-up window for Outerinfo also opened. I thought I had tracked everything down by uninstalling it and then booting into Safe Mode to clean out registry and Norton. Nope, that thing still came back this morning when I booted up laptop. So went Googling and found a site with instructions on how to really remove it. Now I have to watch it to see if it is truly gone. First time I opened up IE after ComboFix rebooted computer, IE said it was not the default browser. Time will tell whether I need to re-image the laptop.
I hate spyware, I truly do.
6 comments:
Awwwww Anna...so sorry you got the Spyware blues!
I remember a few years ago i got this nasty bug on my machine through an email from a valued client...and before I could get the instructions on removal, the thing had taken over! Luckily, I had a back up laptop that I used basically to get the removal instructions and was able to get the job done, but I understand the "four hours" of crap!
I'll keep my fingers crossed that you got rid of that bad boy!
Well Ornery Elephant so far so good. But we shall see. How goes with you?
Anna: Are you still using version 6 of Internet Explorer? I upgraded to IE7 and have constant failures due to the adobe flash add on.
But without it, I can't run the latest animated weather radars.
Mike, my laptop is XP with IE6 while my desktop still clings to Win2K and IE6.
I can pull up and watch the NWS Java radar animations for composite loop on the desktop without a problem.
Which sites are you looking at?
I follow the National Hurricane Center this time of year:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
I lost a link that had all the various models, but they usually pop up on Drudge Report.
My latest favorite is the interactive map which can be sized down a few square miles laid over the Microsoft Virtual Earth photo of terrain. Here it is for my area:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/homeandgarden/home/map/interactive/USSC0155?from=mapsubnav&ref=/outlook/homeandgarden/home/map/USSC0155
P.S. On an unrelated topic, I've gone pretty hard on a pacifist clown at Wordsmith's blog. Chime in if you feel like it:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=13545091&postID=3941891708901334339
Will have to look at those. As for Wordsmith, err 70 comment so far. I might, once I finish wading through what has been said before. Fear I just may repeat what someone else has said.
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