malware

Did the possibly bad thing of purchasing Pokemon Black for the DS. Yes, it is a good game, and the effects and feel of the game is the smoothest yet, but bang goes any chance of me getting any work done. Saying that, I don’t ever really need an excuse not to work. -.- At the moment I am working towards my first gym badge. I do have to say, the character design for the Pokemon seems to be getting worse. Maybe it’s just because two of the first Pokemon I met, when the game got started where a cat and a dog. Yeah not so impressed with that. But the new feel of the game is enough to make me overlook that.

Also, writing this up on the family computer, as I try to banish the dreaded malware and viruses AGAIN. This is the second time in as many months, the computer has been rendered useless by infections of some sort. What happens is that my mum, dad and sister, who use the computer, don’t seem to realise how to actually look after the thing. In fact, when I check their antivirus, a full scan hasn’t been completed since the last time I fixed the ruddy thing.

I think that there should be some ‘Internet Security for Dummies’ that should be given away with EVERY PC. So that everyone would have the basic knowledge on how to fix their computer. I mean, it isn’t too much, expecting people who want to go online to have a basic education about defending against viruses. But, trying to get people to know how to limit damage when their PC does become infected.

But that’s too much. People don’t seem to have any respect for their computer and download whatever they want. I mean, to say that I am the only one who knows how to fix computers in this house is one thing, but to know that noone else seems to even try to look after the computer. It makes me feel a little sorry for the poor thing.

I think the problem is being cause by online games, like free game sites. From what I understand, which may be wrong, every time you do something online, your computer needs to download some data to help get display the webpage. And the more complicated the webpage is, whether it contains games or videos, the more data has to be downloaded onto the computer to process things. From what I think I understand, is that some malware is able to be downloaded onto the PC with the data used to play and run games/videos. And because of the manner that the malware comes onto the computer, it eases past the security software, and infects the computer, often stopping the user from doing even the most simple task.

And trying to explain this too my folks, is like mission impossible. -.-

AKA, trying to fix a computer, and saving it from a malware which seemed to be the most annoying fake security software EVER!!

What was happening is that there were these pop-ups, coming up on the computer, no matter what it was you were using, and they advised you of an error somewhere, and to do a security scan to fix it. You would click to do the ‘scan’ and it would take you to a page to purchase in a ‘product’ to fight these infections.

All seems above board, right?

Wrong!

The error messages were not the most illegible, and looked slightly different to windows error messages. But that was just the fact that the messages were less rounded than the standard error messages, and little things that most users wouldn’t pick up.

Yes, your computer is ‘under the infections threat’. Scary stuff. *rolls eyes* Any without much searching, we soon found out that this is a malicious piece of software that effectively makes up errors. It gets users worried about the risk of their computer, so that they go and spend money on software to fix the problem. This doesn’t happen, and the details you use to pay for things, is given out to ‘third parties’, and leave you at risk of identity theft.

The big issue with this malware is, that your standard security software, will probably overlook the ‘Security Shield’ and think that it is perfectly safe. Although the software can be annoying, in that it pops up every 5 seconds, reporting some kind of fictitious fault. And it is also known for causing problems to the point of crashing your computer, and also rendering anti-virus protection as useless.

Whilst the best advice is to NEVER give your details to something that you do not know of. Because some malware is designed to look pretty damned close to legit anti-virus software. So always check the name that your alerts are under, anything that you have never heard of, delete. Better playing it safe.
I used MalwareByte to try and find Security Shield, after trying to remove it manually failed. Whilst MalwareByte found Security Shield, and noted it as a risk, when it tried to delete it, Windows, once again failed, and I got the big blue screen of fail. At this point, it seemed like nothing would help, so I decided it was time to do a system repair.

This is an option most new Windows PCs have, where they have a partition in the harddrive which contains the ability to repair the computer, without going into Windows properly. Here, you can do things such as restore your PC to the last time it was updated, or restore straight back to factory settings. So because this malware only became an issue in the last few days, I just restored it back to an update that was made about a month ago.You do it by switching your PC on, and before you get to the Windows Boot Screen, press f8 over and over again. This bypasses normal start-up, and puts the PC into recovery mode, where you can then restore or repair your computer.

After about 20 minutes, the computer rebooted and was A-OK!! Hooray!!

I, at the moment, have Norton, AVG and Avast! as anti-virus softwares, and I have never had any issues with viruses *touch wood*.

I have 3 on the recommendation that different security software have different flaws. So hopefully having a few, limits that chance of anything getting through the security.

Tag: malware

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