britishtrident
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 08:23 AM |
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Root kits and Hijackers
I have just spent the best part of two days trying to sort out a customers Windows Xp Pc that had been well truly rodgered.
461 items of malware worst of which was a root kit, in then end I gave saved 170+ giga bytes of data and reformated.
The machine was shared between 6 users -- 3 of whom were using Limewire, the windows firewall was down. The Limewire directories were full of
infected files.
This afternoon I will sort out the couple of remaining driver files I have still to find.
Lessons are
(1) File sharing is like leaving your car unlocked in the inner city.
(2) Keep the firewall up.
(3) Use an uptodate AV program.
(4) Don't let users logon with admin rights
(5) Do weekly backups
[Edited on 17/7/09 by britishtrident]
[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]
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zilspeed
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 08:41 AM |
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No. 4 seems particularly relevant.
I have long been an advocate of locking down all user accounts to prevent children being allowed to install whatever they want.
It works well for us.
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nick205
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 08:42 AM |
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What's a root kit?
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NigeEss
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 08:44 AM |
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Wot he ^^ said ??
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.................Douglas Adams.
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 08:55 AM |
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I've used limewire for quite a while and as you say there are loads of viruses on it. Fortunately AVG seems to be able to scan them before hand,
either bringing up a message as the download opens or I do a scan in the shared folder before opening. Files for programs AutoCAD, Paint shop etc etc
tend to be mostly viruses and need particular care before opening. So far I've had no damage done, thanks mainly to AVG
[Edited on 17/7/09 by Mr Whippy]
Fame is when your old car is plastered all over the internet
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Gazeddy
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 10:22 AM |
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That's the reason I've got a ipcop machina for cleaning my downloads. Running a fileserver to allow me to get the clean files for my
windows machine
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iank
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 10:40 AM |
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A rootkit is a virus/torjan that actively hides itself from detection by replacing bits of the OS. Normally borderline impossible to remove even if
you do manage to detect them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit
--
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
Anonymous
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speedyxjs
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 10:42 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by zilspeed
No. 4 seems particularly relevant.
Id have thought it was pretty common sense also
How long can i resist the temptation to drop a V8 in?
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DorsetStrider
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 11:41 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by speedyxjs
quote:
Originally posted by zilspeed
No. 4 seems particularly relevant.
Id have thought it was pretty common sense also
In my experience common sense is incredibly rare
Who the f**K tightened this up!
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Davey D
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 11:50 AM |
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Is home computer repair/ IT your job, or are you doing it for someone as a favour?
I Work in IT, and have wasted too much of my life trying to fix computers people have screwed over. If it is one of the company computers i ALWAYS
just take an image of the drive, format, and start again .It normally takes a similar/less amount of my time, and the computer is better for it with a
fresh install.
And as for doing favours fixing friends/family computer - Rarely will i touch one any more as it can simply take up too much of my time trying to sort
out the mess their computer is in, and them not having any of the original os / driver / application discs  
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britishtrident
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 06:59 PM |
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I just hate windows
The thing I hate most about it is driver hunting after the os system needs reconstructed.
For our in house windows systems I am planning to switch to using a virtual machine running on a Linux box, That way you can keep a backup copies of
the virtual machine and if it gets trashed I can just copy the backup over have it back in action in minutes. I have a system up and running using
Sun VirtualBox and it will do almost everything a windows xp pc wil do but I am would want more memory --- ideally I would like to give the host
system 4gb+ so at least 1.5 could be given to the virtual machine.
I would also want it more seamless so the normal user was unaware of the Linux system underpinning windows.
[Edited on 17/7/09 by britishtrident]
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Peteff
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| posted on 17/7/09 at 07:06 PM |
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I occasionally get the job of removing stuff that has "just appeared" or "installed itself" from a friend's computer,
the other day it was a toolbar that kept redirecting his browser and was driving him spare. It keeps your mind active anyway 
yours, Pete
I went into the RSPCA office the other day. It was so small you could hardly swing a cat in there.
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