RE: Hard Drive keeps filling up

From: Mark Hicks (lordhog_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/23/03

  • Next message: Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers: "Re: Netinfo Manager"
    To: security-basics@securityfocus.com
    Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 13:54:23 -0700
    
    

      I would head on over to http://www.sysinternals.com and download some of
    their monitoring software ( Filemon, Process Explorer, ListDLLs etc... ) and
    see if you can find out which process has one of these files open in the
    directory where all the tmp files are. If you want to view the contents of
    the tmp file I would use HexWorkshop (http://www.hexworkshop.com) or HexEdit
    (http://www.expertcomsoft.com) to view the files just to take a look inside
    of them.

      Another items is to start shutting down processes from either Task Manager
    or the Services control panel one by one to see if you can find out what is
    filling of the files. Also, look in the two RUN keys in the registry

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
    and
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

    to see if you can find any program that shouldn't be starting up. Also, if
    you are running a machine that has MSCONFIG on it ( WinXP and I think some
    of the variants of Win9x have it also ) as it will list the startup
    processes.

    Mark Hicks

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Harris Samuel W PORT [mailto:HarrisSW@mail.ports.navy.mil]
    Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 11:09 AM
    To: security-basics@securityfocus.com
    Subject: Hard Drive keeps filling up

            I have been having a problem for a week now and can't seem to
    detect
    the culprit. This is on my home network. On my wife's machine, the OS is
    Windows XP, 2.8G, Broadband connected, with 802.11g Linksys wireless
    router.
    I have 3 firewalls running on it, zonelabs, tiny and the firewall
    included
    with XP. I have an online subscription to McAfee virus software, and it
    is
    kept up to date as new updates are issued. I have checked Task Manager
    and
    shut down the processes that I knew wouldn't cause me a problem, the
    rest
    seem innocent enough, (to my knowledge). I've done netstat several times
    and haven't discovered any obvious unknown connections. I have even
    locked
    the firewall down (Zonelabs) on several occasions, to eliminate the
    possibly
    that it was being accessed by an unknown process or program. I have
    Ad-Aware
    and Spy-Bot on the computer. I have all the updates to XP installed.
    I
    have used the Shavlik software and have updated everything it comes up
    with, I have used the Microsoft Security Analyzer to check for any
    security
    problems and have installed all that was called for.
            Now for the problem. 2 weeks ago my daughter called me up and
    was
    frantic, because she had been instant messaging and some putz came on
    and
    told her to invite him in or she would be sorry. She didn't and she was.
    He
    infected her with some worm that proceeded to fill up her hard drive. I
    had
    given her an old computer that I had and it only had a 12G hard drive. I
    used VNC to check her computer out and tried to stop the bleeding, but
    it
    was too much for me. Well, a few days later I get a message that my
    computer
    is almost out of space. I have an 80G hard drive. I looked at the file
    system but couldn't find the files that were big enough to fill it up
    like
    that. I was performing a scan with McAfee (which detected nothing by the
    way) and noticed that the computer was spending an inordinate amount of
    time
    on a .tmp file. I looked at the folder that was in question, and bingo I
    found all the used space. There were several files in the folder that
    all
    ended in .tmp. One I remember was McV90.tmp. There were others, but that
    is
    the one I remember. It was 48G all by itself. I tried to open it to view
    it,
    but couldn't find a program that I had that could open it up. I deleted
    the
    file and regained my space back. A couple of days later the space was
    being
    eaten up again. I deleted it again and began monitoring it every few
    hours
    to see if there was any more action. I couldn't detect much for a few
    hours,
    then it started up again.
            I shut the firewall, so if it was external to the computer, then
    I
    would stop any outgoing action. The firewall came up with a few
    complaints,
    but nothing out of the ordinary (I think it wasn't out of the ordinary)
    This
    didn't seem to stop the process, so I am assuming the problem is in the
    computer. I have a Windows 2000, Redhat, 9.0, Redhat 8.0 on the rest of
    my
    network. No problems with any of them. I have googled, I have McAfee'd,
    I
    have done a few other search engines, but I come up empty as to what
    this
    is. Spybot and Ad-Aware found nothing, as I run them daily. Any ideas
    where
    to go next? I am fresh out of ideas at the moment

    Sam

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  • Next message: Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers: "Re: Netinfo Manager"

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