I've had two Trojan attacks on my pc

[ensho]

one on Fri and one this morning. McAfee did battle and won, thank goodness.

I haven't heard of Trojan attacks for quite awhile. Is it just me getting attacked or others too?

[msongs]

1. they're still angry from losing to stanford and oregon nt

[onehandle]

2. My Macs have been trojan and virus free since the Mid-Eighties. nt

[charlyvi]

6. My Macs are humming along quite nicely too, thank you. n/t

[HughMoran]

12. I learned about what a "virus" was on a Mac

Thankfully I keep up with security and haven't had an issue since the 80's on any of my 8 pc's currently (which is more like 20 over the years).

[exboyfil]

3. I got a nasty one last week

that McAfee does not even recognize (it pretends to be an antivirus program) and apparently it is written by the people who then ask you to pay to fix it. A bear that I isolated on my own and deleted with some internet advice. I was lucky. I used both Malwarebytes and HijackThis after getting rid of the main problem. The key was to go back to default settings on Internet Explorer after getting it off my system.

I am thinking about booting McAfee which was useless in this case.

I don't know much about computers, but you can find lots of good advice on the internet. Fortunately it only attacked Internet Explorer and not Firefox.

[kentuck]

25. I had several trojans that came thru the Opera browser...

It was on the verge of crashing.

[UTUSN]

4. I've gotten a couple of strange links when doing searches on eBay

Yesterday windows popped up, supposedly from Windows, saying that SEVERE infections have been found, and that CLICKING was needed to "remove" the hundreds of infections. It looked official. But I closed those windows and ran my anti-virus, CA, which is probably crap, but after the scan, NOTHING was found. I then did a spyware scan and 67 cookies were found, quarantined. I'm far from being a techie---VERY VERY far. I don't know.

[charlyvi]

13. I had to clear this off a friend's computer.

A very Windows looking window pops up on a site that is usually okay. It says a number of virus infections have been detected. Then it pretends to scan your computer (in an impossible 20 seconds or so) and then lists a hundred or so virus and worm problems. I thought it was very suspicious, because honestly, how could a computer even RUN with that many problems! So I googled the name of the program on my MAC, I think it was PC Doctor or something like that, and sure enough it was a scam. Turns out if you clicked the choice given to get rid of the listed problems, it took you to a page where you had to send these bastards $19.95 to get rid of them for you--even though they were nonexistent. I ran Windows Defender (she was running Vista) and it got rid of the problem immediately. The virus protection she was running didn't even detect it.

[laughingliberal]

16. Had a friend last year who got one of these

She, stupidly, had let her virus protection expire (actually, I think she was broke and could not afford to renew it). There was no way to make it go away. Every time we booted, there it was again. In the end, I rolled her computer back to an earlier checkpoint and that took care of it.

[UTUSN]

17. THANKS!1 for that info. It sounds exactly like what I've been getting. I'm looking

for Windows Defender as we speak!1 Thanks, again.

[UTUSN]

20. Wow, Defender says NO unwanted stuff was found in the scan. THANKS!1 n/t

[charlyvi]

14. Sorry--dupe posting. Why I don't know. n/t

[juno jones]

5. Been getting them too

Strangely enough they're popping up when I click on websites that have traditionally been pretty safe for me.

Avast is getting them and my aux scrubbers are reporting nothing so they don't seem to be getting thru.

Interesting.

[madokie]

9. I'm loving my switch to linux so much :-)

Its hard for me to not break out in a little dance I like it so well

[juno jones]

32. I've been thinking about going linux

but that opens a can of worms since all my programs are windows and I'm not in a position to replace them (Adobe PS, specialty graphic art stuff, etc, pricey) right now what with all the unemployment in the family.

I could always run a partioned box, but I haven't felt like putting it together. Perhaps next time this thing crashes, which could be awhile because I've gotten so good at removing the suckers that I consider it a challenge and not a setback.

I got into windows because I bought my original computer in '97 when apple was tanking and linux was an exotic techie beast with not much support for novice users. I'll probably do something else later, but right now I'm content to let it roll.

[panader0]

7. I thought Trojans protected you from disease

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. What browser are you running?

[ensho]

11. internet explorer

nt

[cowcommander]

15. STOP USING IE!

No security program is going to protect you as much as ditching IE forever. Use these alternative free browsers instead.

http://www.opera.com/

or

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

I prefer Opera since it's simpler, but Firefox has more features if you want to use that.

[Mnpaul]

24. That is no longer true

Opera is safer. Firefox not so much.


Personally I use Maxthon which uses the IE rendering engine and adds a lot of security addons.

[bigtree]

21. IE

get firefox for browsing and leave IE running in the background because some IE functions are used by some pages and systems, like Napster.

[Celebration]

10. Absolutely

In the last month--massive. I even asked in the Computer Forum about it, but nobody answered. Yeah, we did battle here and won. Spyware Doctor handled a serious case where I had to put the computer into safe mode. This has happened to both my computers.

[ncteechur]

18. Perhaps you should switch to Ramses brand

[itsrobert]

19. unrec; wrong forum

Pay attention when you are on the internet. You posted on the wrong forum, so I can assume that you are willy nilly with your internet activities.

[bigtree]

22. right

this is the Tiger Woods/Palindrone forum

[TexasObserver]

29. Yep. Cyber attacks ARE political news.

Most such organized attacks reportedly originate in China, or the Mideast, or in some venue where there are state supported reasons for such cyber attacks.

There are always random hackers, but the thing that is most worrisome is the cyber attack pushed by a state.

[itsrobert]

23. Viruses are a Billions of Dollars enterprises

Not only for the anti-virus companies, but computer repair, and finally making your computer so bad that many just buy a new one. Most computers can last over a decade, if it wasn't for the people behind the viruses. So who is really behind them? Some teenage boy? Most likely the computer corporations themselves.

[ikri]

27. Mostly criminal gangs

Most recent viruses will fall into a small number of categories - to add your computer to a botnet; to harvest personal information; or to fool you into willingly giving them your money.

The botnets are used to send spam or run denial of service / blackmail attacks against corporations.
The ones that harvest your personal information will do their best to steal login details for your bank, etc. so they can clear your account out or order expensive goods from sites where your credit card details have been stored.
The last group are the ones that attempt to look like genuine anti-virus software that tell you that your computer is infected by loads of viruses that only it can remove and will happily do so if you can just hand over $29.

I remember reading about one of the first botnet viruses on the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email where a thorough deconstruction of the virus showed how it was clearly designed to do nothing more than send spam. Unfortunately, thanks to groups like the direct marketing association there hasn't really been much of a determination amongst politicians to do anything about spam which has led to an entire industry writing viruses dedicated to sending more and more spam.

[Obamanaut]

26. Ach! A trojan event. nt

[NoPasaran]

28. Don't blame me I voted for Agamemnon

[Echo In Light]

30. No, but every now & then a forum post is inexplicably altered to misspell words.

B-)

[ohheckyeah]

31. I run McAfee

and Malwarebytes (real time protection). I use Firefox as a browser and I haven't had any problems. I also use Adware Plus which is a Firefox addon.