Virus Attack

[Guttural Engagement]

For people who are new to the internet, please ignore this.
It's not as bad as all that.

Question: What the hell did you do in 15 minutes that caused you a two hour set back?
Sounds to me like your computer is already clogged with virus'.

Well, really I don't know what I was doing that caused that. I did nothing after disabling UAC asides from install Quake 4 (Which obviously didn't cause the problem) - and I've been running up-to date Anti-Virus (AVG FTW) since I got this computer; so I doubt my computer was already clogged with viruses.

It could've been that an internet cookie was a backdoor trojan and when I disabled UAC the trojan was able to do it's job at last? But, even that is a very unlikely scenario.

Anyways, the problem is fixed, and my computer is twice as safe as b4 (I didn't have anti-Spyware B4, just AVG 9 Free. But now I have Ad-Aware Aniversary edition and it's great)

 

[Guttural Engagement]

I recommend if you use Vista, NOT to disalbe UAC however annoying it may be UNLESS you FUCKING KNOW YOUR SHIT. I know my shit, and I thought I'd be safe without UAC; my anti virus was up to date, I had a firewall, AND I'm behind a router.
.

Well then, "FUCKING KNOW MY SHIT" i suppose.

I run with superuser privileges, uac off, no antivirus of any kind and no soft firewall.

Haven't gotten a virus in years.

Agreed. You've got to be pretty fucking oblivious to get a virus.

Hell, even Piracy is safe these days. Common sense and some slight computer knowledge will go a long way.

I'm actually VERY computer savvy; I've never gotten a virus on any of my computers before.
Until today. I've always used AVG Free for my anti-virus and it was always sufficient. I've never used any anti-spyware as AVG has a built in anti-spyware component (Not a very good one though, but it too was sufficient).

And it technically wasn't a virus - it was spyware. What I got was called "Digital Protection" - search it up.

And the only reason it took so long was because I was trying to figure out the problem on my own, and was running scans of all sorts trying to find the problem (AVG came up clean?). So finally I did 10 minutes of research on the problem, found out if wasn't a virus and was spyware (lol) - and then downloaded Ad-Aware and got rid of the problem in half an hour.

So really, it only took 30 min to fix the problem.

 

[Sleekgiant]

Thats why I run ZoneAlarm, X is trying to access the internet, "DENIED"
Its just that simple

 

[Guttural Engagement]

"Norton anti-virus, it's better than nothing!"
"Norton anti-virus...you wouldn't last 20 minutes without us."

"Norton anti-virus, thinks itself is a virus!"
(I used to use norton on my xp machine - one day I was running a scan and everything came up clean except for one small thing..... Norton detected ITSELF as a virus. I've never used/liked Norton ever since)

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

"Norton anti-virus, it's better than nothing!"
"Norton anti-virus...you wouldn't last 20 minutes without us."

"Norton anti-virus, thinks itself is a virus!"
(I used to use norton on my xp machine - one day I was running a scan and everything came up clean except for one small thing..... Norton detected ITSELF as a virus. I've never used/liked Norton ever since)

I've never used it either, it's just the one that seems to be advertised the most...or at least the one that has caught my eye in this regard. I really don't know why people actually pay for virus scanners, I too use AVG free with an odd scan here and there with malwarebytes just to be sure, and I have no problems.

 

[dekkarax]

ironic, UAC is also the name of the bad corporation that accidentally opens a portal to hell in Doom.

 

[Guttural Engagement]

ironic, UAC is also the name of the bad corporation that accidentally opens a portal to hell in Doom.

lol, I totally never thought of that. Nice.

I've never used it either, it's just the one that seems to be advertised the most...or at least the one that has caught my eye in this regard. I really don't know why people actually pay for virus scanners, I too use AVG free with an odd scan here and there with malwarebytes just to be sure, and I have no problems.

Yeah, AVG has always done the job for me. BTW, love your music.

 

[jpoon]

Screw UAC, that crap drives me insane. Avast5, SUPERAntiSpyware and a decent firewall and I'm good to go!

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

ironic, UAC is also the name of the bad corporation that accidentally opens a portal to hell in Doom.

lol, I totally never thought of that. Nice.

I've never used it either, it's just the one that seems to be advertised the most...or at least the one that has caught my eye in this regard. I really don't know why people actually pay for virus scanners, I too use AVG free with an odd scan here and there with malwarebytes just to be sure, and I have no problems.

Yeah, AVG has always done the job for me. BTW, love your music.

Wow! "Love", that's bold...
...pun...sorry. Thanks though, that's very cool of you.

 

[Zacharine]

I think it's actually quite hard to get a virus unless you're doing something a little iffy.

I actually remember reading a study about this some time ago. The conclusion of that study was that if you disable your firewalls and AV programs and simply plug the computer net cable in without even actively using any programs that require internet, the chances of getting within 20 minutes infected with a virus, trojan or malware was around 50%.

This was done on the WinXP(SP3) OS though, so not sure how it would translate to computer running... say a Linux or Win7. And it specifically was connected pretty much straight up to a public ISP router so that there would be as few protected private routers, servers, intra-net firewalls etc in between.

Was the article immediately followed by an advert for Norton?

lol

No, it was a serious study from an IT department in a uni at my country.

 

[D.L.390]

I recommend if you use Vista, NOT to disalbe UAC however annoying it may be UNLESS you FUCKING KNOW YOUR SHIT. I know my shit, and I thought I'd be safe without UAC; my anti virus was up to date, I had a firewall, AND I'm behind a router.
.

Well then, "FUCKING KNOW MY SHIT" i suppose.

I run with superuser privileges, uac off, no antivirus of any kind and no soft firewall.

Haven't gotten a virus in years.

Same. It just depends whether or not you download heaps of freeware and rubbish. And if you do that, you'll get viruses, UAC/Antivirus or not.

 

[likalaruku]

I have Avast & Threatfire running. I haven't gotten a virus in 3 or 4 years.

 

[Majere613]

There's quite a few lucky people on this thread.
Contrary to the beliefs expressed here, you don't need to download anything obviously dodgy or open an attachment to get infected these days. Any semi-amateur website is a potential risk- I've personally had, or narrowly blocked, infections from DeviantArt, Aint It Cool News, Bell of Lost Souls, One Piece of Bleach and several others. With the arguable exception of OPOB, none of those is a remotely 'dodgy' site.
UAC, especially in Windows 7, _does_ help. For example, one common attack vector is for a site to suddenly be hijacked into running what looks like the installer for Acrobat. UAC gives you a chance to prevent that install- and unless you were trying to install Acrobat, it's an easy catch.
Personally, I recommend upgrading to 7, and always running the very latest version of your browser. I tend to switch between IE8 and Firefox as new vulnerabilities pop up. I also run a dual-drive system and keep everything important on the non-system drive. To reiterate, and as thefreeman0001 points out above, the threat can come from just about anywhere- these guys are constantly trying to hijack sites, and their hacks generally stay up for less than an hour, so just because you've never been infected does _not_ mean you've never been to a site that has been.

Seriously, I was complacent like a lot of the above posters once. I learned my lesson.