Any Computer Experts here?

[beauanderos]

I opened an email from a good friend from years ago... and you know it, now my email list has been hijacked. I'm getting a ton of messages that my mail (which I didn't send) failed to get delivered. That's the good thing. The bad thing is all of the pissed off recipients for the mail (spam) that gets thru. The only one here that should be affected would have been Andy at Ryedale. (Sorry Andy). My question is this... am I screwed? Is there any way to delete this virus? I can't block the sender who it came from even though I've tried. Do I need to just set up a new email account and update every damned one of my old links that were connected to the prior email address???

[natsb88]

The first thing to do is change your password. Who is your email provider?

[RxForPain]

I agree the first thing to do is change your password.

Go to www.download.com and download ad-aware and install/run it. It will sweep your system and remove any spyware (it is free, but you have to update and use on a regular basis). You can also download/run avast for virus protection. It is also free and is very good.

[beauanderos]

The first thing to do is change your password. Who is your email provider?

hotmail. But I don't see how changing the password would stop a virus that's already infected the program?

[theo]

I had the same thing happen to me last year and it stopped after I changed my password. I'm not sure why it worked.

[didou]

A virus on your computer can record your password (or high jack your email client software) and send email on your behalf.

First thing to do is get a computer you can trust. Installing a good anti-virus/anti-spyware might work although i'm usually very paranoid about getting infected and i save my personal files, wipe out the computer and get a clean install of a legit version of windows. Cracked windows version usually already contain some kind of virus that can't get removed by anti-virus. There is some kind of virus (and rootkit) that can't get removed from your computer even if you install a anti-virus, it's all about what get installed first : if a virus is on your computer before a anti-virus it can trick the whole computer into believing that isn't here but it is.

- If you are using wireless, shut it down and plug your computer with a wire, if you can't turn it off (some weird router have no options for this) remove the antenna. Not as practical as wireless but they are secure. Wireless isn't.
- Save your picture and personal files on a CD/DVD or USB Key.
- Wipe the computer with Darik's Boot and Nuke http://www.dban.org/
- Install a clean copy of Windows and all of it's update
- Install a anti-virus before anything else

When you get a computer you can trust to be clean and safe, change your password. And never use your email again on a unsafe computer or over a wireless network. Never share your email with others website like facebook. Your password may have been recorded and send god know where and email are sent from there, you have to change it.

For the password i like to choose small sentence that has meaning to me. Something like 'iwalkonthe12streetwhenitsrainning'. These kind of password are very long and impossible to crack with brute force method. Even if you have my whole biography you can't guess them as you will never know what small event has a personal impact on me and the choice is huge unlike my dog or children name. They are very easy to remember since they have personal meaning to me and i don't have to write it down anywhere, you just have to repeat them a few times and it's like a song you can't forget them. The downside is they are long and take time to type, but that a small price to pay to never get high jacked.

I encounter once a hotmail that i never could recover with these step. Still don't know how it's possible, on that case i had to create a new hotmail for the poor fellow.

I know it's look a bit paranoid but when you have your bank account (or paypal) linked to your email (or some crazy ex-boyfriend/girlfriend that don't care about money but just want to piss you off) you may want to do that.

[oktyabyr]

First off, Ad-Aware will only do spyware/adware. Spybot S&D will do some trojans as well. You can try using the McAfee Stinger. The trial version of Spyware Doctor w/ Anti Virus does a really good job. There is another one that I use too, just have to remember the name of it. I'll look it up at home.

No password is impossible to crack. They can always be cracked, no matter how long or complicated. You can make it where it is more difficult. A password like 'iwalkonthe12streetwhenitsrainning' is good, because it is longer, and has numbers as well. But to make it more secure, you should use upper and lower case letter, and use special characters. Lowercase and numbers is fairly easy to crack, just makes it harder with a longer password. When you add in upper and lowercase, numbers, and special characters, the number of permutations go up exponentially. replace I's with !. replace E's with 3. Use *,@,#,&,!. Most password requirements will accept these.

Just because you type in a long password, does not mean the system is using all of what you type. Some systems are limited to a certain number of characters. They don't always let you know. Windows XP stores up to 14 characters. It stores it in 2 7 character hashes. NEVER use Internet Explorer to save your passwords, that is as good as posting your password in the open. WAY to easy to get those. There are a number of easily accessible, free programs to recover Internet Explorer saved passwords. Google it.

The only way to stay secure on the internet, is to never connect to the internet. Wireless connections can be made difficult to get into. At least use WEP security. However, these can be cracked in less than 10 minutes. I have used neighbor's connections to sure before, that were WEP secured. Try to use at lease WPA or WPA2 on your wireless connections. And always change the name of the network to something other than the default. You can also set most routers to not brodcast the SSID. That is the network name. It makes it even more difficult, because you must know the network name to get in. You can do MAC address restrictions. But even WPA/WPA2 can be cracked. MAC addresses can be cloned. Nothing is foolproof.

Wired connections are secure to the router, however your packets are still available to anyone who wants to see them. With enough of them, passwords can be broker, credit card numbers can be stolen. Nothing is foolproof. There are a number of options available that make it more difficult. And when you make things more difficult, they tend to be left alone.

[Mossy]

I opened an email from a good friend from years ago...

Good crew here:
http://www.howtofixcomputers.com/forums/just-fix/

The safest way to go online is to remove the hard drive from a computer and use a "live CD" (or DVD) to run your computer. All that means is that your computer programs run straight off a CD or DVD. If you do not customize your distro (distribution, or version), you will have to answer some questions about what keyboard you are using and what time zone you are in, etc. Less annoying than a virus, IMO. "Customizing the distro" involves "copying" (installing, really) what your computer is running on, along with the settings, to a CD or DVD. Makes start up much faster and smoother.

Once you are set up, you just start your computer as normal and go online. You can set up to save to thumb drives, but I have not messed with that sort of thing. When you are done, you turn off the computer and any malware (viruses, hijacks, saved cookies, etc) just vanish. So does useful stuff, like saved passwords, of course.

This sort of set up is less convenient than the normal set up with a hard drive, but anything bad that happens only survives until the computer gets turned off. That makes it best for banking or anything else sensitive.

Here is a list of Live distro's:

http://www.livecdlist.com/

"No hard drive, no viruses", so long as there were none to start with.

[natsb88]

The first thing to do is change your password. Who is your email provider?

hotmail. But I don't see how changing the password would stop a virus that's already infected the program?

If you use webmail (meaning you go to the hotmail website and log in there to check your mail), then nothing is infected (you can't "infect" Yahoo webmail). Rather, somebody has gained access to your account and is using your contacts list. In that case, changing the password (if you haven't already) will at least get them out of your account (if they haven't already changed it for you...). They could continue to send spam to the stolen addresses and spoof your account (i.e. make it look like the spam is being sent from your account), but they won't actually be using your account to send it.

If you are using an email client (something like Outlook), then it is more likely that there is a local infection on your computer. In that case, download an antivirus program like Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/) and run a full scan. It is a good idea to download multiple antivirus programs to run scans (MSE, AVG, Avast, etc). It is a bad idea to run multiple antivirus programs all the time. Disable the "live protection" type services on all but one, otherwise you will compromise system performance, and occasionally they can interfere with each other.

[NiBullionCu]

The tool we use to clean up infected machines is a program called ComboFix.exe

It is constantly updated and needs to be downloaded just prior to using.

I can be gotten here:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/downloa ... s/combofix

(Crazy name, i know, but we swear by it.)

Remember, the Internet is a ghetto, surf cautiously.

[Lemon Thrower]

turn your computer on and off. it fixes 90% of problems.

[beauanderos]

turn your computer on and off. it fixes 90% of problems.

This seems within my limits of expertise. Usually just keep it running. Alright, so I changed the password. New password is $1000silverin2012 Thanks, guys, for all the help... I'm at work, but I'll wade thru it when I get home

[giddyup99]

+1 on Combofix - good program. HijackThis is another good one.

I had my hotmail account hijacked a while back and all my friends got a great email about good deals on sneakers, personal electronics, and porn. Pretty happy about that one.

On a side note regarding passwords and key logging virus programs. If I make up a password with a capital letter or two - can a key logging program recognize them as entered in capitals? Does the program pick up the "shift" keystroke?

I would guess that most passwords are compromised by key logging programs, and not other humans just testing peoples dogs names and such.

[oktyabyr]

Yes, most key loggers will detect shift keystrokes and backspaces as well, you can get past the backspace by holding it down, but you have to make sure you do the right amount of backspacing.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a good free program to get rid of those hard-to-rid viruses.

[68Camaro]

Yes, most key loggers will detect shift keystrokes and backspaces as well, you can get past the backspace by holding it down, but you have to make sure you do the right amount of backspacing.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a good free program to get rid of those hard-to-rid viruses.

I can attest to mbam. I had a major problem last summer - took a month and a number of codes to get rid of it, and even after getting "clean" to the point of re-doing the boot root block from outside of windows, I kept getting re-jacked. So I finally switched anti-virals, and installed the paid real-time version of mbam, which catches things before they install. It's saved my butt. It's a jungle out there, and it's getting worse by the month. I've been on computers for decades, dealt with two teen-agers and their computer viruses, and never had the problem that I've had in the past year.