Posted on 03/02/2008 7:15:35 PM PST by no nau
My computer is infested with this crap and I can't get rid of it. None of the free services can solve the problem, and I might even pay for such a service, except that all of them seem to be just folks willingly to take advantage of you and charge you more money, and possibly infect you more. Has anyone here seen this? How should I and anyone else deal with this?
I might add that while one may use AVG's free version, I would urge people to buy the paid version- Not that it offers anything more than the free, it is a matter of supporting the good folks at Grisoft.
A good portion of the software recommended on this thread is free to use. The ethical statement offered by the various authors is to provide great software to everyone regardless of their ability to pay. Therefore, it is incumbent upon those of us who can pay to support these great works.
If a software found freely on the internet has been a good and faithful work that has reliably performed a needful service, please take the time to go to the author's page and find their "donate" button, or buy their paid version- Your contributions keep these programs free to those who need them, and fund the improvements yet to come.
For giggles I decompile spyware that tries to download my web surfing history from my .dat files and aim the software so it uploads a banquet of non-replicating viruses from a secure partition on my HDD to the spyware firms servers. If you want to get real ugly you can do much more than this once you figure out the transponders.
And you think Steve Jobs will be less full of himself because you don’t use a MAC ?
I am aware that Apple is a lib company but their products are superior and so I use them. I also listen to the Grateful Dead but do not subscribe to their socialist views on any topic.
I started using ZoneAlarm free version. Very good firewall. I was using PC-Cillin as my virus protection. My mistake has been getting sucked in to using the "paid" versions. Every year I can get both "paid" versions free with rebates. Unfortunately each is trying to take over everything. PC-Cillin 2008 would not even install with ZoneAlarm present. It would not continue installation until I took off Ad-Aware and SpyBot. After I resolve the current problem with PC-Cillin I'll probably get rid of it and go back to an earlier free version of ZoneAlarm and something like AVG antivirus. I have several other computers with the ZA/AVG programs and haven't had any problems.
bookmark
Supporting those who make the software is one thing, paying a third party to give you the free version when no money goes to the creators is quite another. If it's AVG, purchase it directly from Grisoft -- not from a third-party.
I am quite happy with both AVG and Zone Alarm- I support them both, though I submit these thoughts for your perusal:
I recommend the addition of AVG Anti-Spyware to your software stable. AVG Anti-virus is quite good, but I have found it to be compromised on several occasions. AVGAS compliments AVG Anti-virus, and the two together are quite sufficient.
AVGAS is fully functional when installed (includes realtime scanner), but will fall back to manual-scan-only if not purchased. This manual scan is quite sufficient, if updated and used for scanning every couple weeks or so, and is invaluable to have onboard in cases where the main AV scanner has been compromised.
AVGAS is compatible, and will run alongside of any Anti-virus product. It is the old Ewido trojan hunter.
WRT firewall, I like ZA, but my preference for the last couple years has been toward Comodo Firewall. When configured as "firewall only", it is lighter than ZA, and without the "Buy me" nag boards, yet it's method of interface is very similar to ZA, making it simple for joe-user to operate.
Yep.
I just ran spybot for the first time in 7 months. It didn’t find anything. I guess not clicking on anything works.
The way I fixed that problem was dropping my Gateway laptop in the garbage and buying a MacBook Pro.
Re: your church’s Mac OS 9.1 and viruses.
Sorry your church’s computer HD died, but it didn’t get a virus or any other malware. Simply clicking on an email link in OS9 will not load anything executable. Those have to be downloaded and then executed from the finder.
Secondly, there were no OS9 or earlier viruses that did the damage you describe. What happened was the hard drive died. While it may still be spinning, the head is no longer capable of reading the platters. That’s why you got zeros in the boot sector. It is likely to be ten years old. It’s not surprising on that old a machine.
Finally, that computer has no relationship to modern OSX Macs.
Only the antivirus is free, and only in the most basic version, and only for home use. If you want the spyware product or the firewall, or the more sophisticated antivirus, or to use it at work, you’ll have to pay for it.
So if you are using those, then purchase it from Grisoft, its creators, rather than from "my cousin who fixes computers" where the money may or may not go to the ones who created it.
What you said is what I would like to believe, but I was able to get into the HD and scan through it — the boot block structure was readable but the content was zeros, and the PhotoShop files were readable — so the head had not died.
I have received email warnings about the “Postcard” trojan that does this to PC’s — if you click on the link, it downloads and executes. I thought Macs were immune, but now I think that trojan or a similar one has been modified.
Pidgin is great! I switched my family over when AOL dropped support for the old 4.x clients, and DeadAIM was incompatible with the newer, bloated, ad-laden clients. And, it's a major cross platform open source project. The earlier versions (formerly known as Gaim until AOL threatened legal action over the AIM trademark) were a little sluggish, but the latest versions are zippy and stable.
Never click a link in an instant messaging session, even if it's from someone you trust. Always copy and paste into the Web browser, and make sure it's what it's claiming to be.
What you said is what I would like to believe, but I was able to get into the HD and scan through it — the boot block structure was readable but the content was zeros, and the PhotoShop files were readable — so the head had not died.I have received email warnings about the “Postcard” trojan that does this to PC’s — if you click on the link, it downloads and executes. I thought Macs were immune, but now I think that trojan or a similar one has been modified.
Sorry, Zot, I thought you said the data was not recoverable. Yup, you did:
"The hard disc is not useable and the data is not recoverable.
If it is the case that the Photoshop files are readable, then most likely all your data should be recoverable.
Converting a Windows PC executable to run on and impact a Mac, especially an old PowerPC Mac, is not a trivial task. They share no code. The file systems are completely different.
Zot, I find it very odd that anyone would deign to design a virus for OS 9. It seems an exercise in futility. That OS has not been updated significantly since eight years ago, and it now represents less than 1/10th of a percent of users out there. As I told you, simply clicking on an email attachment in a Mac will not infect it... even an OS9 Mac... and certainly not an OSX Mac. Something else has happened to your church's Mac.
I have just completed a Google search and nothing new impacting OS 9 or prior has come up.
It has been many years since I worked on OS9 and older... but my recollection is that OS 9 and earlier did not rely on a boot sector. Any drive can boot a Mac OS. It looks on the hard drive for the System Folder and in it must be a Finder and a System file. Once it finds them, it will boot. If either file gets corrupted, it will not boot but the data and apps on the drive are OK. Since you say you CAN read the files, then this is most likely what has happened. The System Folder on an OS 9 Mac can be literally just copied to a formatted disk with no writing to a "boot sector" necessary to have a bootable disk. I did it many times. Ergo, No virus.
Usually, if the drive is readable, all you have to do to recover an OS 9 or older Mac drive as a bootable drive is to replace those two files with ones that match the OS. In this case, System and Finders for OS 9. A clean install from the original disks takes about 10 minutes and will boot.
The upshot is that I believe your system files were corrupted. These are opened and closed every time you start up a Mac of that vintage.
What did your church buy to replace that venerable old Mac?
Not the ones on FreeRepublic... ;^)>
Show us some exploits on an OSX Mac...
The data stacks on a Mac are not executable... so data buffer overflows can do little except perhaps crash the app perhaps producing a denial of service attack. Even that is only an inconvenience. Just restart the app.
As of now, every exploit in the wild for the Mac is a Trojan horse relying on social engineering to persuade a user to download and install the payload.
That's not to say that the Mac is totally secure... someone might find something tomorrow. But for the last 7 years, it hasn't happened.
When I went through the HD with Norton Utilities, I saw the icons for PhotoShop files, which meant the head was working, but the files are not recoverable.
“Usually, if the drive is readable, all you have to do to recover an OS 9 or older Mac drive as a bootable drive is to replace those two files with ones that match the OS. In this case, System and Finders for OS 9. A clean install from the original disks takes about 10 minutes and will boot.”
I and a computer expert from NASA who is a member of our church spent about 20 hours trying to do this, to no avail.
He donated a clean G3 with OS-9.1 to replace the one we had, and we had most of our data through January backed up on a thumb drive, so now I’m trying to get the applications we use working again.
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