DescentBB

About 4 days ago one of my friends came across a strange site with no front page or nothing. Moments later his computer started acting rely wired. The site save its self as his default and no matter what he did it would not erase its self. Four icons showed up his desktop maybe more hidden inside the computer.

I took the risk connection to him through AIM. I sent him two files Zone Alarm Pro 4 and Spybot - Search & Destroy. It seemed two do the job at first. But after he restarted and connected back to the internet the same damn crap happened all over again. So he did a full reformat on drive C and left drive D alone. Got every thing back to normal with the ZA installed before connecting back to the internet. Every was going fine for a while until he shut off the firewall. Five or ten minutes later the same bull happened all over again. He quickly turned the firewall back on and ran Spybot - Search & Destroy again. So far every thing seems to be ok long as that firewall is up.

Now I did some research on this site and from people clam it spams the hell out of you. What has me that these files are ether still hidden on his computer some where possibly on drive D or this guys now have is IP address. I know there has got to be more to this whacked up site than what people are say. What ever is on his computer now how the do you get rid of something like this.

This is on a side note:

Now I took the risk of going to the site. But nothing happened me because I'm running Zone Alarm Pro 4, McAfee virus scan and it comes with its own firewall. Now I deiced not to post the link on this thread. I don't want to be held responsible for messing up people computers. But if you want the link at YOUR ONE RISK PM me or e-mail me.

Sorry if this thread might be a little out of order.

Weird, He should probably get the security patches for internet explorer.

I presume its not possible to contact the police or some other authority about the site who can shut it down.

you can post the site... just put some spaces in the name or something so people can't accidentally click the link.

All right but I don't blame me if something happens. If one of the mods don't like they can remove it for all I care. But remember this will come up as if it never existed.


WARNING((default-homepage-network.com))WARNING

I had a look, it seems to have had no adverse effects on the computer.

But then this computer is updated with all he security patches (I think) and has a firewall.

Going to that page just brings up a legalese document about how they dont put stuff on peoples computers. Going to google and typing it in reveals quite a bit of bad mojo about that company though. It also reveals several pages that are hosted on that site that are ads, and which trigger popups.

I closed Zonealarm and looked at it with Firefox and didnt notice anything different. In IE6, there were a bunch of popups and dialog boxes asking me to install stuff, but i clicked no each time and nothing happened to my system.

also try useing adaware cause some times spybot doesnt get every thang i founnd out

He probably clicked yes to the things that were asking to be installed

I've been friends with this guy for over 10 years now. He hasn't been on the internet no where as long as I have. For years I've warned him about virus, worms, Trojans, spyâ??s especially Kazaa, and never click on any you don't understand. He never learned to a word I said until now. His even reformatted that computer more times than I can count. But enough of that thanks for letting no about that program Warlock. Hopefully that should set every thing back into motion.

Just goes to show how people who just click yes to anything that pops up just to get it out of the way

Your friend has a very small brain.

Reformatting a hard drive because of some mal-ware? I mean, how dumb is THAT! For goodness sake, a format/re-install is a BIG job and takes MANY hours! I think my format routine, which is fully documented, including all my tweaks, takes me about 17 hours to fully complete!

In even a quarter of that time, you'd post to several bulletin boards and google for the fixes, and get the system back to pre-malware state.

Tell your buddy not to be so dumb, and not to install anything he doesn't want to. Oh, and tell him to install Firefox too.

Sounds like your friend is a victim of THIS.

Make damn sure he bookmarks this link and visits it regularly.

17 hours? my god man, get norton ghost!

Mobius wrote:I think my format routine, which is fully documented, including all my tweaks, takes me about 17 hours to fully complete!

17 hours?!?!?! Geebus dude! What are you on, a 486 with a hard drive that has more fragmented files than a glass house after a hail storm? Damn man, even when I ran a duron 700 I was up and running in under 2 hours. That even includes the time required to nuke the partition table (if required), format, install windows, install any updates, and misc software.

Tell your buddy not to be so dumb, and not to install anything he doesn't want to. Oh, and tell him to install Firefox too.

And to ditch that POS firewall and use Kerio instead. Its MUCH better, and doesn't have any of the bloat....and its FREE!

17 hours...

Mobius has two issues:

1. he as too much software to install

2. he hasn't optimized his routine.

unless he's running gentoo...

It takes me quite a while to get everything back to normal after I reformat. This includes:

• running Windows Update (have to do it several times since e.g. DX9 and WMP9 have to be installed alone)
• downloading and installing new drivers for everything (since I tend not to update drivers that often)
• copying everything back from my backup hard drive(s)
• reinstalling programs like Office, Norton, and StyleXP (since those dont work right by just copying em over)
• getting my Quick Launch, Start Menu, and folder view options set the way I like em
• defragging after I have everything copied over
• tweaking the look and feel via TweakXP, StyleXP, and the system properties.

As you can see, once you start adding up the time it takes to do all that it takes a long time. I've never timed it from start to finish since I dont do it all at once, but it takes me several days to get everything back to normal.

When it comes to computers and taking advice he is very thick headed at times. I'm going over to his house this Saturday. There is only so much I can do over the phone. I've heard about Kerio I just never took the time to download the program. I'll look it later tonight.

What I like to do is get my computer set up to "clean-slate" status and make a hard drive image, safely tucked away on a separate drive. Then if/when a crash happens, it's easy to restore the entire machine.

Ghost is your friend!