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Worst Security Clean-Up You've Performed?
nakhla writes "Last night, I was tasked (by my wife) to help fix her friend's computer. It is a Windows XP home system which has been running slowly, almost to the point of un-usability (like *that's* never happened before). It turns out that hundreds of random processes had filled up its meager 256 MB of RAM. The cause? Nearly 7,500 viruses and worms that had infected the system. That number doesn't even include the hundreds of spyware and adware programs that had installed themselves, as well. Although the box is now behind a firewall, that wasn't always the case. This was, by far, the most infected system I'd ever seen, but I'm sure it can't be the worst ever. What was the worst security cleanup you ever had to perform?"
With that many viruses, is it even possible to "clean" it?
Hell, i do a reinstall if I get even 1 bad virus..
MABASPLOOM!
My uncle's computer had a meager 128 megabytes of RAM, running XP, with two teenagers using it.
... just that they are the culprits for at least 2 computers I cleaned so far.
It was a mess a real mess.
5 minutes starting XP, 2 minutes seeing the window of Internet Explorer appear. 10-15 minutes to be able to download Spybot and AVG. 3 hours running spybot (you read me right).
The hard drive stayed constantly ON during all that time. Then I said Screw That, and I reinstalled.
My conclusions after 3 hours:
- The first and biggest threat all the newbie users have on their computer are OUTDATED norton utilities giveaways they got with their machine. They THINK they are protected, but they closed the "renew" window so often they forgot it's there. Either the software is FREE AND CONTINUOUS, or it's not there, capiche? Avg is excellent, there are many other free ones too... just find one and be happy. Not something that's NOT free.
- The second biggest threat are Norton Security centers, again outdated, again with useless popups. Again with people finding it nagging and deactivating it, making certain not only the Windows Firewall is properly deactivated by Norton's presence, but that their system is totally uselessly unprotected. Very great, coming from a security company. Again, there are many FREE (beer) softwares that do spyware detection and stuff, and Windows Firewall, in all its eloquence, is still better than a kick in the butt, at least compared to the useless deactivated softwares I found.
Not that I hate norton, that is
Then, even if you got years of pro experience in computers, people trust only one person, and if it's not you, you're d00med. I have been explaining to them their meager 128 megs of memory was not enough.... to no avail, they wanted to change computers, almost bought a new one, then another member of my family told them the exact same thing I did, now they have 512 megs and it's screaming. "told you so" was the only answer I could say. Oh well.
Nobody can completelly clean a virus infected system. The ones that claim they did, didn't, but don't know enough about the subject to know they didn't.
To put it bluntly, computer security is like virginity. You either are or you aren't. If somehow, at any time, an "evil" binary run on your system, then the system may be in control of whoever wrote that binary in any number of ways.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire