Tell me your worst Spyware infection story and you could win a $20 gift card to the electronics retailer of your choice. You have to be specific…I want names of what was infecting the PC, how you cleaned it, how long it took, etc. I will judge the entries and give out the card. The winner will get official mention on this post and in next week’s podcast.
Why am I doing this? I was just in Spyware hell trying to rid a friend’s machine of multiple infections. This thing had PurityScan, Hotbar, 180 Search, WhenU SaveNow, Cool Web Search and many others. Typical of my luck with fixing spyware laden PC’s he did not have Windows Restore running or the Windows XP cd. I tried to get him to install Ubuntu Linux as his desktop….no dice 
So without a backup or installation media we set out to try and repair the PC. Basically it sucked….really bad. Multiple tools and 4 hours later he had a reasonably clean PC. There were still remanants of a Casino toolbar on the Control Panel window I couldn’t remove.
I thought it was bad…maybe it wasnt THAT bad. To find out how bad it was in comparison I want you to write me with your worst Spyware story.
So let’s have it!!
Technorati Tags: Spyware, Malware
Popularity: 23% [?]
July 15th, 2006 at 12:40 am
A year or two ago, during my worst era of spyware, I was doing a lot of freelance work. I scoured the web frequently and had to use a copius amount of random software for numerous tasks. I used Adaware, SpyBot S&D, and AVG Free Edition.
After a previous bad infection, I decided to kill System Restore and rely on other mediums for backup. I burned DVDs of crucial files and even kept an offsite CVS server of my documents. I had one harddrive backup of the entire disk, however, stored on my shelf. The disk was identical to my current disk.
After enough random software and web-surfing, I had acquired VX2. I thought, oh well, I’ll just use Adaware. This was before there was a quality VX2 cleaner, mind you. Adaware ran, cleaned it, but on its way out, VX2 took out my LSPs.
There were enough other issues after this point that fixing it was impossible, at least for my talents. So, I decided I’d pop the other identical drive and copy over any updated documents. With a rare BIOS revision trouble on an nForce board, the computer believed the drives should be run in RAID on boot. What happened there? It started trying to force the two drives into striping, completely destroying all the data on the disks.
A series of unlikely happenings, leaving me data-less save for a lonely CVS server of documents that hadn’t been recently updated.
Would I have made the same mistakes now? Not likely.
July 17th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Working as a freelance computer technician, I have seen it all. I would say that 50% of my onsite service calls are in some way spyware-related. One particular infection was particularly unforgettable.
The user complained about multiple popups, computer running slowly, internet home & search pages changed, etc. I knew right away I was in for a good time. Arriving at the machine, I had to disconnect it from the internet to even be able to work. I still got popups every few seconds, turning into blank IE windows after I unplugged the cable.
Luckily I had come somewhat prepared with some spyware removal tools on cd. Ad-aware, spybot, and hijackthis, among others. Found out he had 180, WhenU, mywebsearch, and a few others I don’t remember off the top of my head.
The really bad part was, everytime I tried to start a scan with Ad-Aware, the spyware software would initiate a shutdown command. I was able to counteract this by issuing the “shutdown -a” command, but I had less than 10 seconds to do so when I saw the shutdown notification appear. I had to sit in front of the machine throughout the whole scan. Scanning with all 3 tools took about an hour with reboots, then add on top of that another 2 hours of removing files and registry keys manually, as much of the spyware kept regenerating itself.
I’d say I’m 80% satisfied with the removal. You never can be sure with this spyware crap. I guess it’s nice that I get paid by the hour, but honestly something needs to be done about these sleazeballs who deliberately create nearly impossible-to-remove software. I’ve been in the computer industry for over a decade, and I keep up with it. If it takes someone like me this much trouble to remove something, where does that leave regular users?