March 5, 2008
So tonight I spent some time at a family member’s house, checking their PC for spyware and other nasties… You know I’ve been out of the day-to-day PC repair thing for a few years now… so I’m definitely not up on the popular spyware threat of the day. I couldn’t tell you what the name of the virus that infected the most systems last month. And while I know in some cases malware has gotten more sophisticated (i.e., blended threats), in a number of cases it’s just more of the same. For the most part, there really is nothing new under the sun!
It turned out my brother in law’s PC was fairly clean… SpyBot Search & Destroy did report a few instances of the Zlob trojan, and I also found a remnant of Virus Heat. What a devilish piece of malware that tool is… pretending to be a legitimate antispyware tool, Virus Heat is actually spyware in disguise, nagging you to fork over your credit card number to unlock the “critical features” of the bogus tool. What a sham.
At any rate, here’s what I did in looking at his PC…perhaps it will be helpful to some of you… Basically, I scanned his hard drives using multiple tools. I updated AdAware (free version) to the most recent signatures and ran that… came back clean. I also did the same with SpyBot…SpyBot takes a good 45 minutes or so to run on a modern Windows XP computer (I think they are up to something like 114,000 spyware checks), but it was well worth it as SpyBot was the one that found Zlob. Next, I ran the infamous HijackThis. Great tool, though you kind of need to know what you’re doing a little bit or you can do serious damage to your Windows installation…. HJT basically allows you to see each Windows service, registry “run” key, CLSID, and browser helper object that is installed on your PC… HJT also shows you the full path if applicable, and you have the option right within the program to remove or keep….This is actually how I found the remnant of Virus Heat (somehow one of its registered DLLs was hooked into Internet Explorer)…
Finally, for good measure, I downloaded the latest copy of Javacool’s Spyware Blaster. Classic tool…wish he updated and supported it more, but hey I’m not complaining….the stupid thing is free. Spyware Blaster is nice too because it has an immunizaiton feature (yeah yeah, I know Spybot does as well) that should keep some of the more common spyware threats away…
At any rate, that’s basically all I did and he’s now good as gold. Note this is not intended to be the “be all/end all” guide to removing malware from a Windows computer…so please don’t take it as such. But hopefully for some of you it provides some direction and at least a starting point…
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March 3, 2008
So you see that link on the right hand sidebar to Crap Cleaner? There’s a reason that link is there, right on my home page. You know why? Because the software is good. Real good. And today I want to tell you a little more about it and why you need to be using it…
In a nutshell, Crap Cleaner (sometimes called CCleaner) is a quick and dirty program used to speed up your computer. It does in three primary ways:
- By removing the garbage (crap) left behind by a number of applications on your computer
- By cleaning up your registry
- By optimizing your browser (supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera)
I’m not sure if you know, but every single time an application is installed on your PC a lot of “waste” and “residue” gets left behind (yeah, those are technical terms)…so much so that this waste and residue eats up valuable disk space. Well, CCleaner reclaims that wasted space by getting rid of these excess files. It also optimizes your browser by removing needless history files, temporary files, and cookies where appropriate. And of course it will also compact and clean up your registry — often the biggest mess on your PC.
CCleaner is safe to download (no spyware or anything else to worry about) and 100% free. And it’s dead simple to use. Honestly it’s one of the better PC optimization applications out there. And as of this writing, it’s been downloaded 120 million times! So what are you waiting for? Go get it now…
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February 29, 2008
Today I want to tell you about one of the coolest web sites you’ll ever come across! Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration but you get my point. 
Did you ever receive an attachment from a friend or family member and just *hoped* it wasn’t infected with a virus or carrying a trojan with it? Yeah. Me too. I have one particular family member who for some unknown reason likes to e-mail me videos as WMV attachments! And with all the vulnerabilities present within Windows Media Player, sometimes I’m a little scared to open these videos! Sure, they are run through my antivirus program before executing, but how do I know my antivirus vendor can detect whatever malware may be present within the file? In situations like these, wouldn’t it be nice to run my little WMV through a *number* of vendor’s antivirus scanning engines?
Yeah, it would…
Enter VirusTotal. VirusTotal basically allows you to scan any file on your hard drive using *many* different antivirus vendor’s scanning engines. It’s an on-demand service that couldn’t be simpler to use. You goto the website, upload your file using the form there, and then your file is entered into the que to be scanned. Typically the que is quite short, most of the time 5 minutes or less. Once your file is up to be scanned, the website will scan it with no less than 32 different scanning engines! These engines include all the major ones you’ve heard of (McAfee, Symantec, Sophos), plus a number you probably haven’t (Prevx, Softwin, Norman).
One final word…while VirusTotal truly is a great tool (and free to use), it doesn’t obliterate the need for an antivirus program installed locally on your workstation…hopefully that goes without saying, but in case not….well there you go!
Incidentally, if anyone knows of any other web sites that allow on-demand malware analysis, please let me know in the Comments below…
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Posted in Antivirus, Cool Sites, Malware, Security No Comments » Share
February 27, 2008
So we all get spam every day, right? And while it definitely can be annoying, spam is so common and so prevalent now that most of us just ignore it. Hopefully you have a solution that deals with 95% of it (and if you don’t, let me know and I’ll help you out), but even for the 5% that makes it through to our Inbox, receiving the latest “get rich quick” or “lose weight fast” e-mail can be a major nuisance!
But at the same time, it’s actually kind of interesting to watch the spammers and see their latest techniques… Getting past spam filters is like a cat and mouse game between the spammers and the antispam companies who make the filters…it’s actually pretty entertaining! Today I received a piece of spam to one of my Yahoo! accounts that was selling (shocker here) Viagra… Except there was no misspelled words and no graphics…in fact there were no words at all. Rather, this spammer evaded detection by writing his e-mail with ASCII art. Sort of a combination between text and graphics….
I’ve pasted the contents of the spam message below for you to check out. By the way, in all seriousness, I do NOT recommend you visit the site advertised in the message, as some of these phony pharmaceutical web sites have been known to install drive-by spyware and other malware upon visiting. But an e-mail with this type of content underscores how difficult it is for antispam filters to catch every piece of spam. After all, there’s really nothing in this e-mail that would trip a filter…no suspect embedded images, no misspelled words…no words like “cheap”, “meds”, or “viagra”.
+1 to the spammers…
6N
TK p1 r5 0Z4t lO TvrE xQ
YL bA 2ehYkS yJvh Ek VL LDeW
9z G0 yGh2 3a E8 Vx
1y SV ce 7whb XqS0e 2uXY qeK9 BICs fr I4 k1
gK TQ aW 5V Pf uM q1Y UD ypZn iM gE rO
xpN0 5i fpX2d nh PT Yv MW4P7 LTEY9 K4VX j7 TY jk
kqU1 Y9 kd m2 4z sa XK Uo NW YaDT IX QH dH
Vs JN wy wO im 3l i2 oJ 0K ehh9zq 4q qo OR
p1 qA fubP0 faiR4 Ud gLo45 1FvR 64 bM 7JnL7k UE
df om
EaB8P
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yH B5 IE h1 HM lL WJ ND Zy iwIy5 yMtX RZYq1 CmE PwG4 k6h2o LJd 17ut ISN1 Psi33 BLH
Y9 Bq xX o6 am Cu ta IN rc sw z1 gC xV fwL VvV 18 TU 9N Za YY rZ jl 1X Hm nz hi hrx RIa sO
7vPDkGyj IvUpVIkv vPqAFXaa Hl Fk PVQqCg X2 lx K0 IbtGJb Qm Rh qE Jm CU nk Wn r7 m3
zQ1CmvaA Xcvo4kFQ tk7baO5Z RA 3y I8 Fw zH 5f HI Co 6h Yh Ym 8H G5 0k u7 UW
WOIwIE01 QCPnUf0h yAe3luk7 g8 LU Le EW Z1 bR xU cq 8H wn Na GE fP NC T4 WW vx m3 Yq XJ
At wg 3A Ct fM VP EV kVg7z XYUi xt p8 gy zHzJ Y1aLA PXf K4 Udk1 uoCa 2p 7y 4t
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February 26, 2008
Okay, so I want to share with you some very useful keyboard shortcuts that various Microsoft Windows operating systems let you take advantage of, only you may not know it! Note before we start let me add the usual disclaimer, that this is list is not at all meant to be exhaustive, but rather a collection of the shortcuts that I personally take advantage of…that’s not to say there aren’t other useful shortcuts either…in fact, if you have some you think are useful, go ahead and comment here letting us know!
Okay, without further ado, here we go…
Window Switching - Though this may not be news to many of you, I know still others will be pleased to know you don’t need the mouse to switch between various open folders/windows at the bottom of your taskbar…that’s right, simply press ALT+TAB and your operating system will let you scroll through all your open windows.
Start Button - Tired of moving your mouse or pointer all the way to the lower left of the screen only to click the infamous “Start” button? Me too! Instead, try hitting CTRL+ESC. Isn’t that nice? 
Browser Tabs - What did we do before tabbed browsing? I don’t know either! But you know, I still hate using my mouse to select the other tab I have open… So instead, try hitting CTRL+TAB while in your favorite browser.
Closing Open Windows - Sure, you can click the “X” like everyone else, but you’re better than that! Try ALT+F4 instead…too easy!
DOS Prompt - Need to get to DOS quick? Try going to the Start Menu / clicking Run and typing cmd.
Run Menu - Oh, speaking of the Run menu…instead of clicking “Run”, once in the Start Menu, just hit R.
Services - For you geeks who need to modify the services…sure, you can go through Control panel…but that’s no fun. How about typing services.msc from the Run menu?
Edit The Registry - Any geek worth his salt has spent time in the infamous Windows registry…so if you’re gonna get there you might as well get there quick! Try typing regedit from the run menu!
Start Your Favorite Programs Quickly - Do you use MS Word every day? How about Excel? No? I bet you use Firefox or Internet Explorer every day though, eh? Any of these can be started in an instant by typing the main executable filename of the program in question from the Run menu. For example, if you want to start Word, simply navigate to the Run menu (CTRL+ESC / R) and type winword. Excel is the same process but instead type (ready for this?) excel. Also, I bet you can guess the filenames for Outlook and Firefox too, can’t ya smart guy?? Oh, and Internet Explorer is iexplore.
So there you go, some of the Windows shortcuts I use every single day…have some more to add? Let’s hear ‘em!
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