Re: Wait for it?? Or switch.

From: Len Robbins (lenrbush_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 06/29/04 

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 17:53:33 -0700

There seems to be a lot of secrecy about this but once you experience it,
you want the word to get out. Saturday my wife called me from our store,
saying that her computer, with all "the important information" was freaking
out. Of course, I've stood on my head trying to get her to backup regularly,
which she doesn't. Anyways, the computer was freaking out. New icons all
over the desktop, homepage changed, programs installed, dial-up connection
popping up, and a black screen popping up every once in a while saying hit
enter. After seeing this mess I thought - REFORMAT. But I did the following
which I copied from an email that I sent to my brother:

The first thing that this attack did, of course, was to make the infected
site the homepage on IE. So I unplugged the phone line to the computer and
was able to change the homepage to blank. If I would have cleaned the
computer without doing this, it would have become immediately re-infected. I
was able to install the latest dat's that I burned at work after downloading
it from McAfee. Then I had to get rid of the programs that it installed.
Some were on the desktop and some were shortcuts on the desktop that spoofed
to where the programs really were. I just shift/deleted the programs
installed on the desktop (so they wouldn't go into the recycle bin) along
with some website shortcuts that were put there. As for the other programs,
I just had to find them. I went into add/remove programs and deleted what it
would let me delete, the others wouldn't delete because they were running in
the background. So I hit control/alt/delete and ended their tasks then
uninstalled them. Then I went into msconfig and unchecked all the stuff that
was put in at startup. Then I ran a full virus scan and deleted all the
viruses. OS is Win98 2nd Edition by the way.

This was my first experience with this sort of mess. I felt like a surgeon
trying to save the live of a dying patient in the ER. I had to go have a
cigarette afterwards.

All I can say is everyone be careful and be prepared. They cut the cord on
the Russian server responsible but I'm sure more can be expected.

Good Luck,
Len 

-- 
TO REPLY REMOVE "bush" FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS
Folk Art from Around the World
thefolkartgallery
"henry baker" <holmes@sherlock.buz> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.06.28.23.51.23.674000@sherlock.buz...
> "I hope that Microsoft will come up with a patch soon," said Johannes
> Ullrich, chief technology officer for the Internet Storm Center, a site
> that monitors network threats. "Until they do, you basically have two
> choices: Disable JavaScript in Internet Explorer or install another
> browser."
> Non-Microsoft browsers, such as the Opera browser and the Mozilla and
> Firefox browsers made by the Mozilla Foundation, don't have many of the
> vulnerable technologies and tend to focus more on just providing Internet
> browsing features,
> The advisory noted that Internet Explorer has had a great many security
> problems in several of its key technologies, such as Active X scripting,
> its zone model for security and JavaScript. However, the group pointed
> out that turning off certain features in IE increases the security.
>
> http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-5250697.html
>
> Don't shoot the messenger - shoot the programmer
>

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