Do you support the death penalty for malware authors?

[wabbitslayer]

Spent most of the weekend trying to fix a co-worker's laptop....after looking at it, I determined in about five minutes that a nuke and pave was the only sensible solution; however, for reasons not relevant here, reinstallation of windows wasn't an option.

Started out with vundo, then found 10 or 15 "generic" trojans, the whole time AVG is reporting "all is well"....malwarebytes, superantispyware, spybot, etc. all get killed immediately, safe mode is disabled, and the list goes on....I finally got safe mode working, and there's still this stupid little ****ing *.sys
file that reappears after every delete.

At this point, I ought to tell her either we re-install or she buys a new computer...but now it's personal. I am going to kill this thing.

[Pr3tty F1y]

It would just be better to either require licenses to use a computer (i.e., prevent stupid users from downloading **** in the first place) or for more proactive measures to promote browsers that are less likely to be hijacked (Firefox) and to promote free anti-virus solutions (Avira) so that ****ty Norton/McAfee trials don't expire leaving clueless users vulnerable.

I can't remember, but I think there was a Linux distro for eliminating Windows malware.

[ThirdEye]

**** I use avg

recommendations?

[sittal]

avast

[wabbitslayer]

I don't know if it's AVG's fault or not....it may have been installed on top of whatever crap this is. (Not to turn it into a software discussion but I use symantec corporate)

It also doesn't help that every little weirdo *.dll, *.exe and *.sys I come across on this thing turns out to be some sort of Dell "assistance" software.

[lumpyhed]

get an UBCD4W cd made and go to town on the os drive. Much easier to clean a system when the infected files cant even run

[Quickstrike]

Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit AKA ERD Commander

&

Avira AntiVir Rescue System


are also useful utilities for combating this sort of thing.

Look into programs like Shadow Defender, Windows SteadyState, or even Sandboxie. These will prevent [for the most part - you can never be 100% secure] malware/viruses from taking over the computer.

I like to use a limited/standard user account, shadow defender, MSE, opendns forced through router config on my grandparents pc's. Every time they restart the computer, windows starts out in a clean state. Just have to exclude key folders so that documents and such can be written and saved to the hard drive.
They used to get viruses/malware all the time, but haven't once been hit since I started using the new strategy.

[efin]

Originally Posted by lumpyhed

get an UBCD4W cd made and go to town on the os drive. Much easier to clean a system when the infected files cant even run

This. Especially for registry entries that can't be accessed. Holy crap Vundo/Virtumonde (same thing) pisses me off so much.

[Leprechaun]

she? she?? She was surfing more pr0n then the whole of Rage3D put together it appears. You should worry less about malware and computers and more about hitting that as she seems very horny.

And yes, malware writers should be punished as severly as possible.

[Rayder]

Absolutely! Severity is key! I doubt there would be nearly as much malware "out there" if the penalty for being responsible for creating said malware is DEATH! Not possible fines or prison time, DEATH!

Personally, I think malware creators should be considered international (or world-wide) terrorists, and dealt with accordingly......basically....but with a strong bias towards DEATH!



Probably would about eliminate piracy too, if NoCD cracks were considered "world-wide terrorist malware" and the penalty was DEATH!

Ain't nobody be creatin' no cracks, no mo'! Piracy dries up for fear of DEATH!....or because of it....

There's something to think about.....

[Pr3tty F1y]

Originally Posted by Rayder

Absolutely! Severity is key! I doubt there would be nearly as much malware "out there" if the penalty for being responsible for creating said malware is DEATH! Not possible fines or prison time, DEATH!

Personally, I think malware creators should be considered international (or world-wide) terrorists, and dealt with accordingly......basically....but with a strong bias towards DEATH!



Probably would about eliminate piracy too, if NoCD cracks were considered "world-wide terrorist malware" and the penalty was DEATH!

Ain't nobody be creatin' no cracks, no mo'! Piracy dries up for fear of DEATH!....or because of it....

There's something to think about.....

Nothing wrong with NoCD cracks. I hate having to put a CD in my drive to verify that I legally purchased a game. No other data is even being read off of the CD. They also save you from sneaking around the system using a virtual drive with a "mini" CD image to fake out the copy protection.

NoCD cracks help legitimate users get a better experience.
Malware is just bad for everyone.

[Jankan]

AV will not help if you don't update windows every month.

[Deimos]

Someone mentioned UBCD, I normally use the recovery console, you can remove services that are created by viruses, delete files before they launch etc...
The Kaspersky online scan was also a good tool for this, run the scan, print the report, then reboot in to the recovery console and delete the problem files.
Too bad the online scan isn't available at the moment.
The other option is to use a USB adapter to plug it in to another machine and scan it.

The comment about the licence is a bit harsh, I have been in IT for 10 years and I still occasionally get a virus, I got a worm just the other day, I thought my dl box (server 2003) was safe because it was getting updates from WSUS however the patch that plugs that particular hole had not been applied.
Mostly I remove viruses just for the challenge, I normally do an OS reload even if I manage to clean, because you never know whats its done really.

[SkullE_again]

Use the "ultimate boot cd" with AV on it. windows wont even load.