Thank goodness for SpySweeper

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 15 Sep 2004 4:10 pm

My corporate network connected PC was just hijacked by my stupid mistake of hitting the wrong X in the nested windows that pop-ups use to accomplish this very feat.
The result was to load & infect my PC with about a half dozen icons for running processes before I pulled the network connection. Fortunately was able to go to my Win98 PC & download SpySweeper.
So far Spy Sweeper has found about 6 running spyware programs, two trojan horses and a system monitor. This would be ultimately miserable to fix with just one PC at home on a dial up. Now's the one time I regret a 120 GB "C" drive.

Watch out for those nested windows, they'll get ya if you're not diligent.

What was really strange was that Spy
Sweeper stated that Internet Explorer was running in memory when there was no listing in the process list for IE.[This message was edited by Ray Minich on 15 September 2004 at 05:24 PM.]

Jeff Agnew · Post by **Jeff Agnew** » 16 Sep 2004 5:35 am

You can thank Microsoft's "tight integration" of IE with the operating system for that.

The IE engine is resident when anything requiring HTML is running. Outlook, OE, chat programs, newsreaders, etc.

Joey Ace · Post by **Joey Ace** » 16 Sep 2004 7:19 am

For future reference,
it is best to close pop-up windows via
"ALT F4"

Then there's no chance of clicking on an X that is not a real close function.

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 16 Sep 2004 7:26 am

Thanks Joey, I'm gonna do that from now on. Regards.

I wonder if there is any coincidence between my hijack experience and another thread posted here about "the other forum". I went to it for the first time ever yesterday and it was only afterwards that all he!! broke loose with my browser. I ghosted my 120 GB to another 120 GB about a month ago. Current drive not yet cleaned. Maybe gotta swap in the ghosted drive.[This message was edited by Ray Minich on 16 September 2004 at 08:35 AM.]

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 16 Sep 2004 11:00 am

After 8 hours I've given up and gone back to my ghosted disk. I'll clean this one up this winter when we're snowed in. Boy does it look wet in Tennessee. Lots of red & yellow on the precip map.[This message was edited by Ray Minich on 16 September 2004 at 12:01 PM.]

Larry Robbins · Post by **Larry Robbins** » 20 Sep 2004 1:32 pm

Does anyone know if Spybot search & destroy
and Adaware will work allright if you have Spysweeper installed. I have Adaware and Spybot S&D But I guess you cant have too much protection.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 10 Oct 2004 12:28 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>I have Adaware and Spybot S&D But I guess you cant have too much protection.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I'll second that statement!

Add SpywareBlaster to that group.

I also run both NAV 2004 and AVG Free Beta Edition, plus a hardware and a software firewall.

Wiz

Jeff Agnew · Post by **Jeff Agnew** » 11 Oct 2004 6:54 am

Running two A/V packages concurrently is generally not a good idea. If you must, be sure they aren't both configured as resident processes. Instead, leave one running in the background and use the other for on-demand scans only.

Running them concurrently leaves you open for conflicts and will drag down system resources. NAV is a known resource hog so I'd be reluctant to add to the burden.