Problem something is attacking my pc

Don't start another flame war over macs and PC's.

Did you manage to fix it, OP?

 

Your keen to get off noob status i see & to answer your answer that'll come to say no your not my reply will be *it's a good thing cows can't fly*,now you don't need to answer at all as i've done it for you so you don't need to spam further

 

it's a good thing cows can't fly
- in Abilene.

Although, maybe you have to be a certain age to get the reference.

 

Hey attar, I get it! Does that put me in the older than dirt category?

 

"Does it".
Ha - good one.

 

I will add my paranoid comments...

I concur with 2old and go one step further that Macs are far less secure than PCs. Ever since they went to an Intel based platform it is easy to translate PC code to Mac code. The big difference is PCs have a bigger technical user base. Big business with big bucks find most of the new malware because of their investments in high-end security software and devices. Big business does not use Macs for cost and because they are so vulnerable to malware. I recently gave a thumb drive to a relative because I didn't want it after it was connected to her Mac. Both the Mac OS and their major partners like Adobe are malware magnets due to sloppy coding. I had an Adobe Air updater infection on my PC 5 years before it was announced as a problem.

Xbox, I suspect your PC is loaded with malware that may be why your lists are so long. Your installed AV may have been compromised for a good long time. The STD stealth attack is to first overwrite selected OS files and selected security files before Windows loads. Your AV looks like it is working but will never find anything. As I stated before in a previous post, in the good old days where less than 10,000 viruses where found in a year, I was finding at least 1 virus a month. Now that 300,000 new malware signature are found daily no one is finding much. The problem is the black hats are way ahead of the white hats. No one has addressed any of the stealth attacks, some being known for up to 20 years because they are hard to stop. You made a comment about the posting of the findings for the 90 billion dollar weekend. You stated it was impossible for anyone to update firmware in such a way that it can't be over written. Well it would be foolish to announce a lie to the world if you want to remain a credible expert. This is just one example demonstrating the hackers are light years ahead of the white-hats. I suspect the hackers broke into some if not all the hard disk manufacturer's code for firmware and for at least some HDs they were able to overwrite the firmware is such a way that the engineering team of that HD couldn't undo the problem in probably a month. I can't believe any HD manufacturer wouldn't put their full resources towards finding a solution since their company's future was at stake. Apparently, firmware infections are not even close to new. Hackers break through your firewall and instead of infecting you with a file they target a firmware device. Then during the boot process, specifically the the device initialization process the infection is spread to all firmware connected to your computer. It can also infect USB device firmware. As the below articles state the infections are unstoppable. They are undetectable without special equipment and you must know what the firmware is supposed to be to find a difference.

This has been going on for some time. The first article was written in 2011. I posted an article maybe a year or so stating a survey of IOTs (smart devices) where over 50% of the IOTs randomly inspected were infected. DDP speculated maybe they were infected at the factory. That is reasonable since afterwards I read an article which the author was worried about hardware on some IOTs that extend the range of bluetooths to very suspicious levels.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/con...are-attacks-pcs-firmware-hardware-devices.htm

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14...n-usb-firmware-to-remain-undetected-unfixable

My advice is to back up your data and format. A better plan is to buy a new HD and start fresh and keep the old C: I always for get something to back up. I guess you could do an Acronis full back up then restore selective files. If you don't have widows system disks go to restore disks and for under $50 you can reset your computer to factory defaults without needing a code to activate the OS. I am not claiming your computer will be clean because you may have firmware malware but it will be as clean as you can make it. You ought to see a performance improvement.

Good Luck!

PS - Last week I found a Trojan in the latest Firefox update. This was done on a machine as clean as I could make it. It was down loaded then installed on a fresh clean machine. A new process was spawned when I uninstalled it. I do this plus other tests before I deem software to be safe. On comparison between 2 safe versions I discovered the uninstall of the new to be bigger than the uninstall of the 2 safe versions. The safe versions were exactly the same size. All 3 were the same version. I assume the new Firefox was just as bogus. I have not gotten to the bottom of that problem yet.

 

Where is xboxdvl2, he's the op and haven't heard from him since Thursday???
Where you are xbox?

 

2 old, xbox may have cleaned out a root kit that had rewritten the MBR on all the attached dives so he lost his C: drive. They are common these days.

It may take some time before he is back in business. They have gotten much nastier than when I got my first one of those. You used to be able to recover the data on the infected disks. Now the infected disk will probably re-infect any computer that tries to read it but will not be able to. The infected disks are pretty much throw-aways.

You need to be VERY careful removing root kits these days and back up must have info to DVDs.

Green -

The debate over Mac vs PC is long dead. Both have their place. If you want something easy to use and only want to do common computer tasks the Mac is the choice.

I have recommended more Macs than PCs because people that ask what should they buy are usually less technical.

As far as the urban myth that Macs are more secure than a PC. That is just a myth that may have been true in the days of viruses. Now the threat is mostly botnets. Bot nets take over PCs, Macs and Unix systems with equal ease.

 

where is xbox?.. not like him to be missing this long.. thought he was like me with a couple of old junkers in working order lying about the house.. y'know.. for "emergencies"

as for "botnets".. lmfao.. some people are just so paranoid.. just keep an eye on your router logs

so far a most interesting thread..

 

I haven't heard from ps in a good long time. I hope you are doing better than me. I see you are up to your old tricks testing the gullibility of our members. I like your avatar

Speaking on routers...
Yesterday I reviewed my router. The logs show some failed login attempts a few months back when I was not logging into the device. My 'friend' upgraded the firmware back then to a 'future version' that may come out in a year or so (9 versions above the latest version 10.1.0 - 10.1.9). There were 12 devices on my network that I can't figure out what they were but some of them had share rights to the home computer. I have no idea what was going on since I don't know how you would 'make' a new network device but I am sure I was seriously infected.

Then I went through the 'home computer' I usually don't use or even look at. I suspected that was where the 'devices' resided. Apparently it had a drive (partition) not seen by the OS. From the OS everything looked fine. When I went to back it up after I did some extensive clean up and security upgrades, I saw C: was 100g and was the boot device. My data was on D: which is the DVD drive. The beauty of this is you are using an OS you can't see or scan. I rewrote the MBR to get rid of the hidden partition. Acronis can't write to the disk any more. I don't think firmware malware is as rare as Kasperity would have the public believe. Maybe what I have is only a precursor to the dreaded malware or maybe not. I don't have the tools to re-flash that HD. Of course most of the public have the brains of a goat. They will remain oblivious to infections unless they can't use the computer like poor xbox.

Just for grins.. As I was writing this, Chrome updater tried to place some files in a redistricted location. I don't have Chrome or the updater. I decided to block it. I can't keep all malware out of my computer but no weenie is going to infect me using such a primitive ploy.