Re: What are these "Impersonate" keys about?

SueInCincy wrote:

As to your wider problem, I did have one other thought - theoretically it is possible for a compromised USB or firewall device to take control of a computer simply by being plugged into it. I think you mentioned having an external disk drive, and you probably have various other external devices too; perhaps one of them has been compromised?

I am not quite sure that my case is what you are describing. What I do have on the backup hard drive is virtually everything that was on the hard drive of one of the two computers that was corrupted.

I'm suggesting that the firmware in the external disk drive (or another USB or Firewire device) might contain malicious code which takes over your computer as soon as you plug the drive in. In this scenario the malicious code isn't on the disk drive in the sense of being contained in one or more of the data files, it's in the electronics around the disk drive.

This is unlikely - no such attack has ever been seen - but is theoretically possible.

If you install your computer from the Microsoft-provided CD, without connecting it to any network or plugging any devices into it (the mouse and keyboard are OK) does it show signs of infection?

Harry.
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