WARNING - Intelligent Explorer Virus

12/7/03 | TC

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

I sat dont at my station over an hour ago and responded to an Explorer upgrade option without thinking.

This ISN'T a normal option, it was simply a pop-up. Without thinking I responded to upgrade and downloaded a nightmare.

I have yet to break this.

It consists of an additional bar which creates a new home page, http://find.intelius.com with files I've deleted in addition to wwd.ieplugin[1] - and proceeds to iniate infinite pop-ups of EVERY type out of http://www.n-case.com.

ANYTHING internet related will be tattooed with the new bar. View - Toolbars - Intelligent Explorer" will eliminate the bar from your current page but each new one you bring up will require you to go through the process of removing it again.

[Cultural Jihad]

Ping for Concerned's post above.

[Hawkeye's Girl]

As someone who owns both a Windows PC and a Mac, I feel compelled to point out that if enough people buy Macs to really increase their market share, there will be viruses, spyware, and so on written for them.

[Concerned]

CULTURAL JIHAD WROTE: "You have to use semicolons ; between email recipients rather than commas , as you had done."

Thanks, Cultural Jihad! I could have sworn I've always used commas in the past. Has the procedure changed or am I just dreaming that it used to require commas?

To all the rest listed above, please see:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1035915/posts?page=55#55

[philetus]

(free) Spyware Blaster works in conjunction with search and destroy.
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
Try it, you can't do any worse.

[Stop Legal Plunder]

As someone who owns both a Windows PC and a Mac, I feel compelled to point out that if enough people buy Macs to really increase their market share, there will be viruses, spyware, and so on written for them.

"Security through obscurity" is part of the reason for the Mac advantage, but security by design -- whether through Apple or the open source Free BSD Unix which makes up most of OS X's kernel -- plays a much greater role in maintaining Macs' near complete freedom from viruses, trojan horses, etc.

[zeugma]

Bump for you poor suckers still using windows and IE.

(Also for cool patriotic Moziia theme!)

[Tall_Texan]

My home page goes to "about blank" whatever that is. Every time I reboot I have to change it back. Would appreciate a solution to this problem.

That's my problem too although I don't think I have the same problem that TC has (although I use the pop-up blocker with the Google toolbar (free) and it knocks out practically every pop-up.

My homepage goes to one of two search engines - one os called "Lucky Search" and I forget the other one (with a green background). You can go under "Tools" then "Internet Options" to re-enter the homepage you desire.

I've notice that sometimes it keeps on my homepage, even after shut down, and sometimes it doesn't. I don't know what the "triggering" mechanism is but I'm going to start paying attention to when I visit Drudge and see if there's a pattern.

If you find a fix, let me know. If I find one, I'll let you know.

[Free Trapper]

Delete.

Before I got some of those "safetys" and got rid of the junk they found,my computer was having fits.I'd been waiting for someone else(computer guy-HA)to do it so I'd get the right stuff.

Those free downloads really helped me.

[El Gato]

An excellent alternative to "Spybot" is "Ad-aware"

I've got Ad-aware, although not just the freeware parts, on my machine at work, and Spybot on my machine at home. I like Spybot slightly better, it seems less intrusive, and completes faster, on comparable machines. (well maybe not all that comparable. I think the home one is about 2x faster, and has 40% more memory, so perhaps the comparison on speed isn't quite fair. OTOH, the home one has two harddrives, each larger than the one on the work machine. I installed SpyBot right after getting something similar that kept resetting my home page and restricting what search engines the search buttom would bring up. It removed it with no problems.

[RadioAstronomer]

bttt for later read

[Free Trapper]

Spybot and addaware work well together for me and I have an old,slow computer.Each catches a few the other will not,at times.

I liked Spybot best at first but now that I've gotten used to Addaware too,I feel about 50/50.

[Free Trapper]

That's the free versions of Addaware and Spybot.IIRC the Spybot was very easy to install but Addaware took a little more effort for me(truly computer illiterate before).

[EUPHORIC]

Thanks, Cultural Jihad! I could have sworn I've always used commas in the past. Has the procedure changed or am I just dreaming that it used to require commas?

Bleh. Ignore "Cultural Jihad" he is just hung up on punctuation and uses that as a bashing point like all liberals/marxists/socialists/muslims etc who do not have anything else to use as a weapon do.

You see it all the time. These cavemen finally understand how to form an English sentence through INTENSIVE "education" and then they run around waggling their fingers when they see slight deviations from the syntactical rules they were taught (with MUCH effort).

That is the gift of the third world to America when America tries to educate the third world.

I've seen very detailed and eloquent writings that opposed the left totally dismissed by those cretins because of punctuation and/or syntax.

They know what an elipsis is but will totally dismiss your words with prejudice and ridicule you if you do not write in a way that THEY CAN UNDERSTAND and use words and punctuation precisely as they were taught.

Is that the problem of the WRITER? NOPE! That is the READERS problem and he should just stop babbling away in Arabic and speak ENGLISH more often and then he would understand the nuances of our language.

Now that I've vented (in a relevant fashion) we can break to the point... Sometimes FR wants commas and sometimes FR wants semicolons. Depends on what you are doing and where...

If "Cultural Jihad" cannot understand that then CJ needs the educaion and experience. Until then: Bouse Tizi CJ.

[Captain Beyond]

bump

[RightWingAtheist]

Is search-space.com your homepage usurper? That's what happened to me to. I stupidly didn't bother renewing my McAfee firewall when it announced it had expired, and that very day, I got hacked into-including by some sleazy porno site which now pops up every once in a while. Now in addition to to renewing my firewall, I have to go by some sort of file-cleaner (grrrrrr....)

[Tall_Texan]

Update: I just downloaded Spybot S&D and its updates, ran it and removed some stuff that *might* have been the cause. Then I downloaded updates to Zone Alarm (which I had already), then rebooted. My first attempt to access IE brought me to my preferred homepage (FoxNews.com). Since the problem before was intermittent, I'll need a few days to determine if this fixed the problem or not. By Friday, I should know.

There were a couple of suspects with names like EZSearch.com, Gator.com and one other I don't recall, plus a lot of cookies that were trojans for downloading info.

[Las Vegas Dave]

Ping for later followup.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

A woman who can use RegCleaner... your boyfriend is a lucky man...

That is one great program, isn't it?

[At _War_With_Liberals]

"Unfortunately, I "downloaded" the Sunday night updates, but fortunately, I did NOT "install" them. How can I get the "downloaded" files off my computer? Anybody know?"

open explorer, check windows\temp

[Squantos]

Thanks for the shields up thang........said my puter is stealthy and healthy...........:o)

Stay Safe !