Malware

For some reason we have seen a gigantic increase in the number of people bringing computers to the store that are totally “owned” with malware.  This stuff, the malware, is really potent.  While I do recommend that people with malware infections do a complete re-install of the OS, I do like to see what is infecting the system.  I find it educational and helps in case someone refuses to do the re-install.

One guy brought in his system that was “not running right”.  I fired it up and holy shit, was it bad.  By the time it was all said and done, we backed up his data and re-installed.  I threw every tool I thought would help at it and still, when IE started something was running that caused all sorts of problems.  Please note that this system was on an isolated network connection, otherwise I think that it would have owned the whole network here.

Customer Gets Owned

Today a customer came into the store today and said that his bank account had been wiped out. The customer had brought in a seriously infected laptop to be examined. After taking a look at the machine I could only recommend a reinstall of the operating system. The thing wouldn’t even log into the Windows “safe mode” correctly. Well, long story short I told the customer when he left the first time that any internet accounts that he had used with the system should have that passwords changed ASAP. This is a standard recommendation when anyone has any type of mal-ware infection. In this case, the customer chose NOT to change that password at his bank. He said it was because he had to call the bank to make the change. I guess he should have taken the time to call.

The real fear that I have is that most customers have this exact attitude and do not change passwords. I had always wondered if anyone I knew had lost money due to these types of theft. Now I know for sure. I must say that I am not really surprised give the amount of systems that I see with problems related to mal-ware. So the moral of the story is be safe and not sorry when it comes to protecting yourself from getting owned.