I just wanted to let you know that I’m not dead. This weekend, aside from celebrating with the family the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, I helped some friends with their computer. After about 10 hours of funk, trying this, trying that and generally hating malicious people who write viruses I was able to remove it from the machine and then set it up to be more secure, a wee faster, and hopefully useful for them in the months to come.
Hell has a special place for virus coderz and I’m pretty sure they only serve caffeine free diet soda there.
10 hours? Removing any malicious software is easy: Insert the recovery CD or OS install media and install from scratch.
A compromised system cannot be trusted, ever — Even if you remove the malware you’re aware of, who is to say what else it may have reconfigured or installed to ensure that the machine remains under the same botmaster’s control?
As a helpful side effect, this forces the owner to reinstall all of their software and restore their data from backup, a process painful enough to help them learn that security really is the less painful way to go.
I think that as long as there are Hot Pockets in hell, script kiddies will be content.
10 hours…wow. I’m an IT Manager/computer tech. I would have just reloaded it. But I know how it can be, after awhile it’s like you against the virus & you must win by any & all means!!
😉