Scary new "blackmailing" virus

Same here.

AVG and Spybot

unlike semantic which runs this 'doscan' on startup slowing boot to a twenty minutes process (inescapable as it reinstates itself) plus the rtvscan during normal ops which makes me rather the computer had a virus it slows it down so much.

a lot of that is from Trojans that are time and date released..
i believe if they are past the release date they will open right away..
i've had some from old hard drives pop up that were clean when i pulled them off..

If a computer gets infected you can never trust that computer again. The only solution these days is to wipe it and restore from a backup. So with these blackmail viruses (they're nothing new by the way) even if it decrypts your harddisk, you should wipe it and roll back to an earlier backup anyway, which kinda defeats paying up.

Personally I use Jungle Disk with Amazon S3 for online backups, but I'd be interested to see how it deals with these kinds of viruses. Presumably while the backup drive is mounted anything can wipe the contents or the backup files can get infected. Would be nice if deleting files from a backup could be disabled, that is, old archived backups automatically deleted by the server instead of the backup software. Just a thought. I image backups to a usb drive too so wouldn't be the end of the world.

AVG is probably the best free antivirus. If you're prepared to pay for a better one then nod32 is a good choice. Whatever you do avoid Avast, unless you like headache inducing convoluted user interfaces.

One thing I'm GLAD I did a while back was, after performing a nice & fresh Windows XP install, I made a Hard Drive Image before and after installing the rest of my software.

Now its just a matter of a few minutes to reinstall everything I need.

I also recommend people disconnect from the Internet before scanning/removing viruses & Spyware. Some of 'em are tricky lil' things that re-download themselves as you're removing the 1st one.

That's what I do too. I use Acronis TrueImage.



Or, they never left your system in the first place. Alot of them leave hooks in all kinds of places. That's why I say you can never trust a compromised computer, ever. For example, would you really feel safe doing online banking afterwards!

All I can say is, do your backups periodically, use updated antivirus, and.....I'm so glad I have been using Linux exclusively for the last 2 years

What do you use for this? I was looking at Norton Ghost , but is there something better?

I used to use Ghost and it gets the job done nicely. Though in recent years I switched to Acronis TrueImage which was better at the time I switched. I don't know if Norton caught up. TrueImage is also PC Pro's choice too.

Doubt you'd go wrong with either though. Ultimately all you need is the ability to make a perfect image, ability to put that image back onto the drive (obviously!), and it's also nice if there's a native Windows app which can mount the images so you can cherry pick files off it. TrueImage can do that and Ghost should too. Ability to make regular backups is a bonus too but I don't use TrueImage for that.

Thank you. I will give it a look see.

Yea, I've been using Norton's Ghost for some time now. Best $75 spent! Boots from the CD too!

True. But when you're dealing with someone who's stuck without an original Windows CD, it's useful.

Most of the people I've had to deal with use the internet for Email and eBay. To them, nothing else is there. One of them last year discovered this "new" thing called "Craigslist" So banking online is not something they do normally (thanks to all the media scares)

All drive imaging software can boot from a CD. That's how you would put the image back on to the drive. With TrueImage you can make images by booting from a CD or by using the Windows app. I prefer to make them using the CD because I feel safer doing it that way. The nice thing is when booting off the TrueImage CD it looks and feels like a Windows app even though you're not running Windows.



I never understood how craigslist became so popular. The site makes my eyes bleed.

I hate those darn blackmail virus's that catch you off guard

Blackmail trojan deepthroat: you buy my software or i show all those pictures of you while you were in bed when you thought it was safe!

*photoshop opens on it's own as thousands of pictures over the past year flash quickly by*

OMG how you get those!!! and where do i sign?

One of my friends, who is quite tech-savvy, was helping a neighbour that he barely knows, because that neighbour had virus infections in his computer. In the course of a half hour conversation, the neighbour had volunteered all of his passwords, to my friend (who is effectively, almost a complete stranger). Who knows what other sites he'd given his information to, what phishing emails he'd responded to. Hardly surprising his computer was infected. Some people just shouldn't be online at all.

Very true!

Whenever I'm working on someone's computer, I have THEM type in the passwords.

And there's times I think that you should have to take a class or something before you even touch a computer.

If there's one thing doing PC/Network repair has taught me:

Most users are clueless.