Worm came previously

[Avatar]

I KNOW I have no viruses I do not know about.

You may have NO idea how funny that statement is...   I'm envious, and wish I'd said it... 

First of all, NO Antivirus program gets ALL virii.  They do tests on these things, and none of them are 100%.

Second of all, Conficker is a worm.  This means an unprotected system will become infected simply by being on the network if there's another reachable infected system.

The vulnerability it takes advantage of has been patched for years, it's only unprotected systems that haven't kept up with their MS Security patches.  Unfortunately those number in the millions.

Conficker and it's variants are very good at stealthing themselves.  They've slipped by a lot of AV programs and infected a LOT of systems.  That potential base is scary when you realize that conficker will, at some point(s), contact an IRC channel or website and ask for instructions.  These instructions can do anything from telling it to modify itself again to become even harder to detect/clean, to mounting a Denial of Service attack on a major site.

It's not knowing what it might do that made everyone nervous.  Luckily the creators of it have decided to sit quietly and wait things out, which is only lucky for today...  who knows what it'll do tomorrow.

In the meantime if you're patched and up to date you're fine.  Doesn't mean you shouldn't use a good AV program, and AVG is one of the best, or that you shouldn't also practice safe computing and stay away from those bad pirate and pr0n sites... 



-Av-

[Warfreak]

The one time im glad (?) Vista bugs me to wits end to update the security.

[Zero Angel]

FYI: worms and trojans are different beasts all together. A worm will use an infected computer to scan the internet for vulnerable computers and infect them. Simply being smart about your computing habits will not protect you from a worm.

In fact, I remember once installing Windows XP on a computer which used dialup to access the internet. Within 2 hours of installation the computer was infected with a nasty worm. Keep in mind this was an unpatched pre-SP1 copy of windows XP. And those things ate worms for breakfast, lunch, dinner AND brunch.

I doubt even a zero day threat (a threat which is exploited before patches are issued) like conficker will make it far, because a lot of people have automatic updates, AV, and firewalls these days.

[Red Devil]

So....if my computer is infected, I should not worry about it, since it will just go infect vulnerable computers?

[hybirdisdf]

Im gonna get my vaccum (sluuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrppppp) it is clean now.No more worms.The worms is in the dust bag.

[sabrebattletank]

Install Linux. Use it for everything that Windows isn't critical for.

[Warfreak]

I have a linux install here... somewhere. (it has to be here because it was at the top of my to-do list) 

[VSMIT]

How do you lose an OS?

VSMIT.

[cheesepuffly]

Install Linux. Use it for everything that Windows isn't critical for.

Being a gamer using most main stream games, they do not work on linux, besides when and if i install linux i will install it on my PlayStation 3

[sabrebattletank]

Play Guild Wars. It works even more beautifully than Aishwarya Rai, the most beautiful woman on the planet, according to the industry standard CBS news.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/29/60minutes/main663862.shtml

[Nielk1]

Install Linux. Use it for everything that Windows isn't critical for.

Until you get Linux viruses.

EDIT: And I do anything suspect in an isolated VM.

[sabrebattletank]

True. But you dont have to worry about those.

[Nielk1]

True. But you dont have to worry about those.

And I don't have to worry about Windows ones since I am not inept.

EDIT: and I get tired of writing sudo for every friken little command.

[Wraith]

Yeah, I know what you mean.  I spent hours last week trying to disinfect a pc then ended up having to reinstall the OS.  For reasons like this, I wish owning and operating a pc required a license.

You could have posted a hijackthis log. I would have gladly helped.

Last week, I ran into something neither AVG, Norton Systematic, Spybot Search and Destroy, nor Adaware SE could detect.  The malware slowed the pc to a crawl and spammed the user with IE popups.  I literally just said F**k it then reinstalled the OS.  There are things that AVG won't detect.  Heck, AVG was installed before the time of infection so not only did AVG fail to prevent it, it failed to catch it too.

You mean Norton *Service POD*. Ad-Aware SE is outdated.

When I am bored, I manually audit my registry.

I KNOW I have no viruses I do not know about.
I have some tracking cookies.
I have some false positives in a Ducati game.
I have a Virus in a file I need the file for and I can bypass the virus.
And I have tracking cookies (who doesn't).

I don't scan my PC often because I use common sense and have not needed to.
The only viruses I get are ones that sneak in from my brother's viral jungle PC and I watch that well.

I check things in a VM if I am suspicious, where I can monitor every little change that occurs.

I dont have tracking cookies at all. I use Mozilla Firefox v3.0.8.

IMO kaspersky is worthless.

These four programs have tremendously helped my efforts in cleaning all computers/labtops. I recommend trying them out if you think your unclean or not sure that you are clean if at all.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - MalwareBytesAntiMalware

http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html - SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition

http://www.freedrweb.com/ Dr web cure it program. Very fast but if you get a BSOD meaning Blue Screen of Death you may have bad ram.

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/ Stinger works well and used by various techs to find perhaps hidden infections.

[Nielk1]

Um, I use Fire Fox. YOU HAVE TRACKING COOKIES....

Perhaps you should get a checker that knows to check FireFox.

A tracking cookie is nothing more than some really simple info on you. For example, mine simply suggested I like video games, and as such caused the ads that use those cookies to display video game related ads. YOU HAVE THEM. It is IMPOSSIBLE not to have them. You can't block them all. If I wanted to, right now, I could go set up a tracking cookie for my site, even if I never act on its info, that says what parts of my site you use, and you would never know.