Cyber Attack

[aka fuzzy 96]

josef,
please don't leave and please don't take this persen-ally. i believe the perspective in which we read things is individual,and thus what one sees one way another reads it another.
forums can and often do spark controversy. some people are rigid and can be very adimant in thier views. this is the beauty of a fore um. it is up to the reader to digest the information provided and look at it from several viewpoints to find the one to be comfortable with.
with objectivity we can learn a lot from each other. it's comparable to watching an ant farm. no 2 people will come to the same conclusions.
i read a lot here , store what ii think is good and forget the bad. take everyything with a grain of salt.(too many may raise your blood pressure)

i did not read this as an attack,but i understand what you are sayin.
hang around and learn and every once in a while you'll get a good chuckle
rick

post script thank you for your service to our country. you guys and gals are not forgotten here

[Scarlet834]

Ditto--please do not leave! And thank you again for the help you offered me earlier.

[montana]

One thing about virus on PCs is my friend super smart geek who is an IT person told me to never have more than one anti virus software on your computer. He also told me McAfee and Nortons worse anti virus to have. He recommends Kaspersky ( anti virus version not the internet one ) http://usa.kaspersky.com/store/comparis ... GOO1630364 and says to put malewarebytes ( http://www.malwarebytes.org/ ) the FREE BLUE BUTTON one on your computer and to scan regularly. I have 6 computers and it does the job. Just giving info to help.

These two things will keep computers pretty safe.

[BleepingBeauty]

One thing about virus on PCs is my friend super smart geek who is an IT person told me to never have more than one anti virus software on your computer. He also told me McAfee and Nortons worse anti virus to have. He recommends Kaspersky ( anti virus version not the internet one ) http://usa.kaspersky.com/store/comparis ... GOO1630364 and says to put malewarebytes ( http://www.malwarebytes.org/ ) the FREE BLUE BUTTON one on your computer and to scan regularly. I have 6 computers and it does the job. Just giving info to help.

These two things will keep computers pretty safe.

Just a slight contradiction.

Personally, I have McAfee and Spybot Search & Destroy running at all times; also have Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes, which I run weekly. Overkill? Maybe. But I use caution with online activities and feel relatively safe. So far, so good.

[montana]

"Just a slight contradiction. ?"

Kaspersky is installed as main my anti - virus software on 6 computers......malwarebytes is used to scan as only a back up. malewarebytes does not scan my email and sites I visit daily.
My friend says NOT the same thing . confusing I know

[KatieW]

Josef, if there is someone on the forum that you do not wish to interact with, or even see their posts, go to Control Panel and make them your "foe". Then you can stay, and enjoy the forum. I hope you do.

[Tielman]

There are no virus for mac or Unix or linux.

Please, Please stop stating false, and misleading information!!

I use Linix, Windows, and an IPhone for work, and I can tell you flat out that there are MULTIPLE viruses, and Multiple trojans for ALL of these systems.

There are even specialized attack vectors for all kinds of things you guys no nothing about.

[scotty]

I've been using Macs (and PC's) since about 1998 and haven't gotten a trojan or virus yet. They do exist, though. They're just rare since Macs constitute a smaller percentage of computers used worldwide making it a less attractive target.

As for the question about Word and Excel, they have Mac versions. I have the Mac version of MS Office, but I usually use Pages (a Mac program) which can open Word files, and I can save my documents in Word format, too. I've never had trouble connecting to networks at home or school. If there's something that absolutely cannot be done in the Mac OS and must be done in Windows there is the option to boot up in Windows as someone mentioned. Even some of the Macs at the Apple Store were running Windows last year.

[taberge]

Are you really sure there is no such thing as a virus for a MAC?

It is more likely that since hardly anyone uses and or owns a MAC that why would people writing such malicious code would have an incentive to even make the attempt of writing for a MAC.

[Sleeprider]

Pretty amazing misperceptions here. A directed attack for a minor issue like publishing a torrent link would be pretty rare and a waste of time. Getting a virus from a torrent or pirate download is pretty easy. So many ways to hide. Right now this post is going through a VPN tunnel and has a Netherlands IP address of my choosing (109.123.79.19). I can come at you from anywhere in the virtual world. I doubt this was directed. For those of you feeling smug and secure with Macs, it is not the lack of vulnerability, but the "ethic" of hacking individuals that keeps you safer. If that was a corporate or government platform of choice, there would be plenty of problems. Popularity has it s draw-backs.

From the Netherlands....Catch me if you can. I'll post from Albania in a few minutes.

[junie]

Ok I feel so stupid What on earth are you guys talking about? Please explain a little better for me I'm PC STUPID.

[DreamDiver]

Josef,
It's really late at night, and I'm up because I can't sleep. It happens.
Paranoia in small doses can be a good thing. However, I have found that when in doubt, it helps to remember that most people really are not interested in what I do and where I've been. They really don't care. More often than not, that's a good thing. Perhaps it might help to take a deep breath and retrace what happened to put your computer in a state of compromise. Given the caliber of the members who post frequently on this forum, there's a high likelihood that you already know what I'm about to say - perhaps even more - but on the odd chance that others don't, perhaps someone will find what I'll say below useful.

The fact that you took precautions and recently backed up your machine before installing EP2.2 reflects the good kind of paranoia. The site that offers the download has a sterling reputation with Web of Trust. Even then, it's no place for children, since most of the ads are about porn. Using Firefox with 'NoScript' add-on, I can see that there are at least 6 external sites with their hands in that site's 'pie'. They're called third-party adservers. They pay sites to allow them to place ads so they can collect data on viewers. The adservers collect money from people placing ads. The adservers for this site include adperium-dot-com, foxnetworks-dot-com, openx-dot-net, cltomedia-dot-info and clicktorrent-dot-info. Even reputable sites like nytimes.com use adservers, so adserving in itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

The bad kind of paranoia is the kind that keeps us up at night, wondering if others are out to get us. "They" may well be. However, the best approach is to accept that possibility with a clear head and lay out a plan of action that includes first debunking the likelihood that anyone is singling us out. That includes looking at where you go on the web. There are a lot of dimly-lit halls. You can pick up the equivalent of digital jock-itch - or worse - just by being in the wrong place and not being sufficiently protected. If you frequent 'fantasy visual aid' sites, well you're just asking for trouble. These types of sites are far more likely to attempt infection than this particular download site. The best advice is simply not to go down the dark alley with the fresh trail of blood and glowing blood-shot eyes staring back at you from the shadows. You can tell the protagonist not to every time you go to the movies, but they do it anyway, right?

Meh. Sometimes, you just have to go... A good example: medical software unavailable at any price to the patient who really could benefit from its use. You know it's a bad place with a lot of questionable content, but you go anyway. The big clue that you know it's a 'bad' site? You wouldn't send your grandmother, your six-year-old daughter or your pastor there. You might send that sibling who taught you the pull-my-finger trick. If you use that site's services on a regular basis, your risk of digital infection increases. Perhaps you clicked on one of the ad links. Try not to do that. They're not google, so they don't pay someone to make sure the posted ads are clean of infectious content before they show up as links on their site. They just 'collects their monies,' and 'you takes your chances'.

If you have to go there - the trick is to be protected, get in, get the link and close the window. I use Firefox, latest version with the NoScript addon to ensure that fewer exploits reach my computer. With NoScript blocking all third-party ad vendors, still several of the adperium ads showed up - slick as snot. They have one of the poorest reputations on Web of Trust. (mywot.com - not weboftrust-dot-com). Just going directly to adperium-dot-com introduced a script that tried to force cookies on my browser in and endless loop. Firefox recognized the problem and asked if I wanted to stop it. I've set NoScript to forbid any attempts to serve anything from all third-party adservers mentioned in this post. I only use other browsers on sites I completely trust - the well-lit side of the internet.

Digital infections are notoriously difficult to be rid of. It's more likely that something infected your computer the more traditional anonymous drag-net way than it is that someone specifically targeted your computer to teach you a lesson. Adservers are evil to begin with because they track your data across websites if you let them. Even with this download site's reputation for clean downloads, most of this site's adservers are truly disreputable - they're worse than the equivalent of fly-wing-pullers, even for adservers. Pop-ups can be disguised to look like a traditional dialog box on your computer. Click the wrong 'button' and you're infected without even trying. Worse - the infection can be so deeply rooted that the only choice (if you don't have a clean backup disk image as you did) is to wipe the hard drive and do a clean reinstall of the operating system.

It's possible that torrents may not be automatically scanned when downloaded on your system. Manually scanning the zip for viruses before opening or installing might prove helpful too.

In all the discussion a couple things aren't clear...
Did you successfully rid your computer of the infection and reinstall 2.2?
Has anyone else who downloaded the software noticed a similar infection?

[BlackSpinner]

You don't need to go as far as buying a mac to surf safely. My home computer runs Ubuntu. I use it and firefox for surfing. I can reboot under windows too for the software I run and support.
I suggest you find some tech geek to help you. You can do a barter exchange like I do. Food and art or costumes for fixing things. There are lots of them out there who get a kick out of making their friends hacker proof.

[Paul56]

Being safe doesn't start with all kinds of protection software products nor a different operating system or hardware platform...

...it starts with being extremely careful with where you surf, what you open and in general how you behave online.

I've said this for years... the Internet is the modern day equivalent of the wild west. This basically means it is a minefield that you need to tip toe around in to avoid trouble.

[JohnBFisher]

... Instead of offering helpful advice, it came across as a hateful personal attack. ...

At best it was not helpful. At worst it was hurtful. Either was it was not appreciated.

... Worse yet, the list of people supporting me was extremely short. ...

Well I for one appreciate that you posted your concern. It's very frustrating to have a hack attack take down a system. I've had it happen. It takes a lot of work to restore things to normal operation.

... Just what am I missing here. ...Really Really Upset in South Texas.

Look, there are always times when people say things online that will upset us. Instead of leaving the forum, I would suggest you stay and help others who are learning how to use xPAP therapy. You can add that poster into your "foe" list and just ignore any further posts.

Otherwise the other poster "wins" the contest and the rest of the forum suffers.