I have been having the worst experience that I have ever had since owning a computer. I have had SBC DSL for over a year with no problems. When I got it I plugged it into my ethernet used the software and set it up. A few months later I bought a Lynksys router and set it up and worked fine. Over the year I reformated and set it up a couple of times. Well on Monday some fool hit a phone pole and my phones and DSL got interrupted. SBC stated the would get service running again by Wednesday. So I unplugged the modem from the router and plugged straight into the computer so I could see when the service came back on. On Wed. morning I was backing up Hide and Seek in Nero, when I noticed the Internet light on the modem came on, and that is when all hell broke loose. Nero stopped working and my computer was hijacked. I could not open any program and pop-ups appeared everywhere. I could not save anything on C drive because the spyware would not let me. So I did reformat number one, and as soon as I turned on the computer it happened again. Did reformat number 2 and used Windows firewall, Norton Firewall and tried to stop it. Ran Reg cleaners, and Adaware but could not get rid of it, all the junk would immediately take over. Called SBC and got the Bombay techs who kept saying to download there protection, I could not make them understand that the hijackers would not allow me to do anything, and if I turned on the modem more junk came in. Finally, on reformat number three I just plugged it back into the router and prayed. At first it did not work but after a reboot the internet came back and no spyware. Now if something happens again to my computer, I can't plug it directly into the comp because someone is obviously getting in through SBC. Do any of you know what programs I could use in the future that will stop this if I have to plug this modem directly back into the computer. At the moment these hijackers are better than I am. Thanks all, for letting me get my frustrations out of my system. It took my until 1:00 AM this morning before I finally got my computer back, but have lost data and still have loads of programs to put back in. But have been able to get back to burning.
Try using pest patrol and/or Hijack This, next to a proper firewall. and i'd suggest you keep using that router, it's probably the only thing keeping all the junk at bay.
Thank you for the info and will look at these two program. What I need is something that zaps them immediately because they manage to break right through the firewalls, at least with the router they cannot get through lynksys because I have no port forwarding turned on.
Pest patrol and hijack this keep the incoming spyware at bay, or you could, of course, get a cracked version of webroot spysweeper, and turn on the shielding (same goes for fully cracked ad aware se). if you're running windows, you could also try microsoft anti spyware beta, it's free, and has some active protection against spyware. hope you can get the problem solved dude, in any case, good luck! [edit] and, if you're not running firefox already, get that instead of stuff like I.E., it wil also stop alot of spyware dead in it's tracks [/edit]
thats pretty strange though, i have never seen or heard of anyhting like that happening before. I did not think spyware could install its self like that. especially not with a firewall on too. at first i thought maybe a trojan that let the attacker connect once there was no router in the way but if it happens after a clean reinstall then that is weird stuff. do you have a static ip? maybe some1 is hacking your pc.
I thought it was a virus, at first so I thought with the first reformat it would remove the problem. But the minute I turned on the modem and tried to install the SBC software it all come back and took over the computer. I thought with the second reformat I would put up everything in advance and that would stop it, but again as soon as I turned on the modem more came. I am not sure how it is getting in because this is way beyond me, I have never seen anything like it. You have no control over your computer you cannot get into programs, control panel, nothing. DOS screens were coming up like the cmd.exe and errors from all programs that weren't even running like defrag, the the blue screen of death would come up. There was no way to shut down the computer except using the power button.
Tough luck arniebear i know how you must fell i've had similar things happen to me b4, by reading that it's obviously some cracker/hacker messing with you. You should give TrojanHunter a go, it's a pretty powerful scanner but it's shareware still it has it's pluses. Yes it is very odd that it would still happen after a reinstall can't understand that, anything wireless? EDIT: If it's not a hacker then the problem may lay with SCB and/or there software.
I use the wireless router for my notebook, but I am not networked to the main computer. It is only routing the signal and neither computer is on at the same time. Cannot for the life of me figure it out. But I am going to find the strongest spy zapper I can.
sorry to hear what happened, arniebear. you don't realize how valuable and importand your computer is until you watch helplessly as someone hacks into it. Have you contacted SBC about the issue? I've had SBC dsl for about 6 years now and they're great with pretty much all types of tech help, or if anyting you could at least report the incident to them, so they can possible investigate
Your antivirus program isn't strong though Norton is like the number one antivirus program most virus makers will try to get through now these days.I would suggest a better antivirus program,when you use Norton the viruses out today can sneak right through that firewall.A better antivirus and a better firewall will give you the upper advantage.That is a good thing your router firewall is on,without that viruses are bound to come in.I use Panda Antivirus and it has a pretty good firewall,another program to look at is PC-Cillin antivirus that program is also good.A good firewall to use I think is Syngate,but I would suggest staying away from ZoneAlarm.I used ZoneAlarm before,and that is a really easy firewall to get through.When you can check out lavasoft adaware,that is a very good program to use for adware an so forth.I feel sorry for you arniebear for real man,just switch to better protection and you should be good to go I am hoping alright bro.I had been using Norton and it just sucks to use now,it was pretty good back in the day but now there are too many dedicated virus makers for this antivirus.
Some other good apps to stop spyware are javacool's spyware blaster and spyware guard. both work great in conjunction, spyware blaster stops it from even being installed in the first place and spywareguard protects against some the changes and harm spyware does to a system. and of course both apps are free.
getting rid of the spyware is the easy part. finding out how it got on the pc through a firewall within minutes of connecting to the internet on a fresh install is the difficult bit
It's a mystery that I am still trying to solve, right now I am on my router and have downloaded Sypbot Search and Destroy am running Tea Time, Norton Antivirus, Firewall, CC Cleaner, Adaware and will be looking at stronger programs. I keep thinking it was a virus that Norton just could not find but after reformatting twice I do not know how it survived. All I know is I am not going to plug that modem directly into the PC until I get to the bottom of what started it. All SBC says it to download their programs, but in order to do that I need their installation software which requires you to plug directly into the computer, no thanks.
One well ment tip : throw spybot off your pc, i've seen it do more harm than some of the worst spywares around, especially on win xp systems. If you feel confident enough to use regedit to manually remove spyware, you could try using Bazooka, which can be found at download.com. it searches for spyware, then tells you where it's housed in your registry, and even tells you what you need to delete to get rid of it.And like l-burna said, you might want to think about using a better firewall and anti virus, norton is #1 when it comes to leaks and security breaches
These days all you have to do is connect an uprotected or unpatched system to the internet to get hacked. A recent article showed the average time of infection down to just 12 minutes by simply connecting to the internet with such a machine. http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39200021,00.htm Many of the exploits use flaws in the OS for which a virus scanner is useless, for example there is a well known vulnerability in the RPC code in most versions of Windows. For it to get infected requires no interaction from you at all, there are other infected machines actively scanning for vulnerable machines to infect through that exploit. It was patched a year ago, but if you didn't install the patch or just reformatted and haven't patched before going online you stand a very good chance of something like that happening. I sat and watched a PC with the SQL slammer worm attempt to probe nearly 20,000 PCs in less than 2 hours looking for others to infect. I had blocked it by a router access list but it was still trying to find others and I could sit and watch the counter of the access list increment. At the minimum, install Zone Alarm or turn on the XP firewall before putting a PC on the net. Those will at least block the RPC, NETBIOS, and SQL ports. The best option is to already have the patches downloaded and available if you have to reformat. If your Windows XP installation cds don't have SP2 it wil still have the firewall, it just won't be on by default. You could also slipstream XP with SP2 on another cd and install from it if you prepare it before you have to reformat. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp
