OT: anti-malware progs ineffective

Whoopee!

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Make sure all your spyware removal programs have the latest updates applied then unplug your network cable. You have to run the scans and removals while not connected, otherwise stuff is being downloaded and installed faster than you can clean it up. You may want to boot into safe mode as well before running the removal tools.

I also suggest you try using the Microsoft Spyware Removal Tool free for download from MS's download area. It's just a relabeled version of Giant's product. It finds things that neither Spybot S&D nor AdAware find. As the guy said, it's pretty much an exercise in futility trying to totally rid your machine of all traces of this crap. You may also need to disable windows system restore stuff so that windos doesn't help you out by restoring the spyware infected files.

I remove allot of this junk all the time for people and the problem is only getting worse day by day. These things engrain themselves so deeply into windos that it's virtually impossible to get them out. I also see allot of WTools and WebRebates on machines, this is a real bad thing. They generally run as 2 parallel processes so terminating them is next to impossible as the sibling will simply respawn the one you kill. Since windos tells the process that you are trying to end task on it to give it a chance to terminate normally, most spyware naturally takes advantage of this as well.

I've long-since lobbied for OS-on-EEPROM, especially now that we have such high-density hardware. Anything without specific permissions just isn't going to get clearance to write to it, simple as that. Maybe a "key" you need to insert in the front of the PC to upgrade the OS/service pack, etc. (Say the switch allows the EEPROM to get +12v.)

As far as the programs themselves, I think it should be illegal for any company to include any kind of "malware" with their software, known or not. Since it is impossible (and arguably immoral) to police such companies, they could be added to a blacklist network instead, which every computer connected to the net can automatically check daily. Any suspect software comes up flagged as bad, much like how SpamCop works but only for programs. i.e.,

Ding! "Attention, you have Kazaa installed, you idiot! 17 people are preening through your hard disk right now, 2 are deleting your Pamela Anderson nude collection, and 1 is editing your registry. Recommend you uninstall Kazaa, like, yesterday..."

-M

-- "Konnichiha, douzoyoroshiku." MCJ 200404

accomplish....

I can't say I recommend doing business with companies that are so foolish as to use/require ActiveX, but if you like playing Russian Roulette with your HDD:

I've used Mozilla since 1.2 (they are currently at 1.7.3 Stable) and I have never felt any desire to use ActiveX. If the morons at a biz can't figure out how to use Javascript and allow everybody to play, screw 'em--I'll go elsewhere.

I can second this motion. I switched to FireFox and Thunderbird... got lots of new features, it's faster, no popups, no "window maximizing", no "webpages which play annoying music", no malware... can't say enough good things about switching. You'll be glad you did!

-- "Over-unity, UFO's, Zero-Point Energy... there's a reason scientists go 'mad.'" MCJ 200305

If windows was designed this way...

Rene

Maybe publicly identifying people who write this crap (with a picture, name and address) would take care of this problem. I'm sure many pissed off users would love to "personally congratulate" the authors.

And than perhaps an amnesty for any "crime" involved in congratulating.

Burn 'em on the stake!

If C can't be written, most of the bug fixes aren't needed since they are fixes to ways that C can be corrupted.

Not even close to the same. Windows constantly writes stuff all over C even when running as just "user mode". Bugs can allow important stuff to be overwritten. ith my solution, most of the bugs don't matter.

That is sort of what I suggested, but I don't think you can trust the downloaded version of a program for very long. The next time your computer gets hit, the virus may modify the downloaded files too.

The "it" I mean is specifically what you created ei: the file you produced. If it gets infected before you save it to CD you lose it but assuming that you detect the virus, all the stuff before that point is safe.

My wifes computer is less than 4 months from its last re-install and already stuff doesn't work. Re-installing is a majop pain because it uis an upgrade version so it wants to keep all the malware or refuses to install. When it is installed, it is complete virus bait and has to be patched, patched and patched again before the network is used.

I just fired :) it up. I'm impressed. I've tested my banks and credit cards and everything seems AOK.

I guess I need to try Amazon, since I buy a lot of Stuff from them.

...Jim Thompson

For E-mail I'm going to stick to my venerable Eudora Pro v3.0.5

I don't get spam simply because I whitelist every site I do business with.

...Jim Thompson

John,

My webroot spysweeper removed a real stubborn version of the coolweb search and homepage hijacker. I had to update the original version on the spysweeper website, but it worked. You may want to try it.

Joe

This is the only interesting related bit I could find

Spammer's Porsche up for grabs

AOL says the Porsche has "symbolic value" Internet giant AOL has ratcheted up the war against unsolicited e-mail with a publicity-grabbing coup - an online raffle of a spammer's seized Porsche. AOL won the car - a $47,000 Boxster S - as part of a court settlement against an unnamed e-mailer last year. "We'll take cars, houses, boats - whatever we can find and get a hold of," said AOL's Randall Boe. According to Mr Boe, the Porsche's previous owner made more than $1m by sending junk e-mail.

Sad, but true.

Most P2P software comes with plenty of spyware attached. They also refuse to run after removing the spyware/adware packaged with it. "required component is missing, please reinstall" Beware, it will delete your pirated music if you allow it.

Try:

I can't vouch for it, since I don't run Windows, but it's worth a try.

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Thanks Joe, I'll give it a try. Just as a note ... I was making a comparison of windows system files on my normal C: hard drive and my reference D: hard drive, which holds an unsullied copy of everything. (win98) I found extra files in C:\, to whit ...

C:\windows\VCM\ MSTASK.DLL (size 245,824) C:\windows\VCM\ MSTASK.EXE (size 118,368) C:\windows\system\ MSTASK.001 (size 118,784)

(plus a MSTASK.DAT and MSTASK.INI in the internet explorer\uninstall directory and a extra windows 'help' file MSTASK.GID)

These DLL and EXE files are also (correctly) in C:\windows\system\ as ... MSTASK.DLL (size 245,760) MSTASK.EXE (size 118,748) The odd files in the \VCM\ directory have been tampered with.

I've made suitable changes but expect CoolWWW to remain. There's something else in there that's not identified. Hope your prog can find it :-)

A few months ago I was on dial-up and easily noticed any unwanted programmes coming in hence pull the plug. Now with broadband, download speeds are about

In article , Mark Jones wrote: [...]

When I "upgrade" my toaster, I just buy a new one. Soon the same will be true of the PC. You will buy it with certain programs on it and thats all it will do. It will save a lot of trouble.

I think it perfectly moral to outlaw malware. If we can ban food that contains toxins and drugs that don't work and cars that don't have breaks and water heaters that explode, the malware banning seems like just more of the same.

Enforcement isn't all that hard in many cases. You just have to be willing to blow up someones house in India or something like that.

You can achieve a similar effect as an eprom OS if you use a partition saving program to backup your C: partition.

Then you can restore the Operating system anytime to exactly the same state.

If you like you can even restore instead of rebooting, if you want to reset the operating system every time you start the computer.

If you have a second partition, or a second hard disk you can keep your data on that and saved partition images which you can restore to C: partition.

Both data from the second partition and disk images of the C partition can also be backed up to CD's, of course, to get a second line defence against loss of data or programs.

Two good partition saving programs: the commercial norton ghost and the freeware "Partition Saving".

This software lets you create a compressed copy of the C: partition, and store it on another partition/harddisk or on a CD burner.

When something goes wrong, viruses, technical problems, whatever, you simply restore the C: drive. It takes 2 minutes, a lot faster than resinstalling windows and all your favorite programs, and faster than the reboot procedure on many computers filled with ad and spyware routines to be loaded.

I save the windows installation after I have installed windows and a few programs I need. Later I install more programs, and make a new backup with partition saving.

When something goes wrong (or I have installed and tried a load of useless programs) I can choose which disk image I want to restore, a really clean and fresh installation, or a more advanced one with several extra programs and settings. I have 3 saved images to choose from right now, from a very barebone windows installation, to a copy of my current system as it was two weeks ago.

I make sure to store my important data on another hard disk, and on another partition on the first hard disk, and I back up both the data and the partition images on CD.

If my first hard disk breaks down I simply buy a new one and restore a partition image to the C partition. If my second hard disk goes down I copy my data from C and all is well again. If both break down simultaneously, which is highly unlikely but possible, I buy two new hard disks and restore the backups from CD.

Both norton ghost and partitionsaving are small programs you run from a DOS floppy, or live-CD. Ghost has the added advantage of a windows program which is used to open ghost disk images in a manner like we open zip files, look inside, copy files out from the archive/image, copy files into it, so you can change it. This is sometimes useful, for example if you have a file or a program which cannot be deleted. You make an image of the partition, go into it like a zip file, and erase the un-erasable file or program, and restore the image to the C partition.

If you are hit by a virus which makes windows un-usable you can run the partition saving program from a floppy, make a copy of the current state of the C partition, restore the latest good partition image, and reboot. Then you can explore the image which doesn't work from your normal windows environment, change things, copy files you would have lost otherwise, etc..

A new way to backup your data files is to store them on internet, so you can access them from any connection and any computer. Just get an account where you are allowed to store files.

They normally infect the installed files, not the raw downloaded files.

But that backup will re-infect all else after you reinstall.

It sounds like you have some bit-rot going on there. Have you totally eliminated the possibility of a hardware fault? I haven't had much problem, well, at least until I tried installing PDF Reader 7.0, whcih pretty much trashed all other versions, and itself. Since, downloads have been iffy.