- 9,209
- DerAlta
A few weeks past, I had a bit of a computer catastrophe. It all started with a program I couldn't seem to delete. There were three files in a folder that the machine wouldn't let me delete. It always stated they were in use.
Under Ad-aware they always came up as pests. A quick check of services.msc and msconfig confirmed they weren't starting up with the machine. Yet, no matter what, they always came up as in use when I tried to delete them. While doing a search on the net I came across and on-line free pest scan from Zone Alarm.
It ran nicely, and what it found scared me silly. I had a Key logger installed in the machine that slipped by a hardware firewall, and software firewall, my anti-virus, Ad-aware and Spybot S&D. I hunted it down and killed the program. Deleted it, it's folder, it's registry settings and anything else I could find attributed to it on the net. Phew.
A few days later I ran Ad-aware and then the Pest scan. Ad-aware caught a handful of Cookies, and not much else. Pest Scan caught the Key Logger again. It seems to have snuck back in. Killed it and anything else I could find, again.
A few more days later, It happened again. Ad-aware caught nothing, but the Pest Scan caught the same key logger. I killed it and ran the Pest Scan again. Came up clean. I began my search on-line to find out more about this key logger.
As it turns out, it didn't have to sneak in the second or third time, it simply never left. It had wrote it self into the Ad-aware folder as a file called "unwise.exe" and re-wrote the Desktop Icon shortcut to reinstall itself everytime I ran Ad-aware. How smart is that? IT skipped it when running Ad-aware and then everytime you ran Ad-aware it reinstalled itself.
Easy fix, was to kill anything/everything related to it, and repath the shortcut to Ad-aware without the extra bit of code written in.
As for the first program that I couldn't erase, it had covered itself as part of explorer. So in the task manager, I killed explorer, started DOS and deleted the folder with the three files. REstarted explorer, and Voila! it was gone.
So in reality, I now run anti-virus, two firewall, and three pest scanners.
And they still sneak in.
AO
Under Ad-aware they always came up as pests. A quick check of services.msc and msconfig confirmed they weren't starting up with the machine. Yet, no matter what, they always came up as in use when I tried to delete them. While doing a search on the net I came across and on-line free pest scan from Zone Alarm.
It ran nicely, and what it found scared me silly. I had a Key logger installed in the machine that slipped by a hardware firewall, and software firewall, my anti-virus, Ad-aware and Spybot S&D. I hunted it down and killed the program. Deleted it, it's folder, it's registry settings and anything else I could find attributed to it on the net. Phew.
A few days later I ran Ad-aware and then the Pest scan. Ad-aware caught a handful of Cookies, and not much else. Pest Scan caught the Key Logger again. It seems to have snuck back in. Killed it and anything else I could find, again.
A few more days later, It happened again. Ad-aware caught nothing, but the Pest Scan caught the same key logger. I killed it and ran the Pest Scan again. Came up clean. I began my search on-line to find out more about this key logger.
As it turns out, it didn't have to sneak in the second or third time, it simply never left. It had wrote it self into the Ad-aware folder as a file called "unwise.exe" and re-wrote the Desktop Icon shortcut to reinstall itself everytime I ran Ad-aware. How smart is that? IT skipped it when running Ad-aware and then everytime you ran Ad-aware it reinstalled itself.
Easy fix, was to kill anything/everything related to it, and repath the shortcut to Ad-aware without the extra bit of code written in.
As for the first program that I couldn't erase, it had covered itself as part of explorer. So in the task manager, I killed explorer, started DOS and deleted the folder with the three files. REstarted explorer, and Voila! it was gone.
So in reality, I now run anti-virus, two firewall, and three pest scanners.
And they still sneak in.
AO
That was pretty neat how it would re install itself every time you ran Ad Aware, though. I have some questions: Why do these people do what they do? Why do they write spyware and adware and the like? Do they think they can put it on their resume or something? Please tell me why these people do this.
