Re: Web searches hijacked by malware

"David H. Lipman" <DLipman~nospam~@Verizon.Net> writes:
From: "Charles Packer" <mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxx>

| Thanks very much for the name of the thing. I did a
| Google search (on my Linux box, of course) and found
| the article on Vundo to be informative and apparently
| up to date. It did say that the thing attacks the
| MalwareBytes product, but it also had a reference
| to a site with detailed instructions --
| http://www.wikihow.com/Delete-Virtumonde
| that listed several other products. At any rate, it
| looks like I'll have to budget a couple of hours for
| the process, so it may be a few days before I can
| get around to it and report back here.

| --
| Charles Packer
| http://cpacker.org/whatnews
| mailboxATcpacker.org

Charles:

Dealing with malware is nothing that should be dealayed UNLESS... the PC is kept off
during that period.

Additionally, there is NO reason to wipe the PC and reinstall the OS from scratch at this
time.

No web search hijacking trojan rises to this level of draconian
action.

Well, as far as David assumes. It's mighty hard to prove that
negative he's attempting to pawn off as fact.

As such, if you wanna sleep without many worries, flatten and
rebuild. If you're a gamblin man, remove the malware you know about,
and do some hoping there isn't malware that you can't detect, and go
about your day with lingering doubts.

Note also that attackers are getting very good at search optimization
so if you go looking for solutions using web searches for a problem
you have, it's not hard to end up with rogue anti-malware products as
well as an offered solution to your problem.

From today's wire feeds, as just one example
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091208/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_search_engine_safety

.