Wild Wild Web

Its a Wild Wild Web out there, packed with zillions of spyware, worms, viruses and all things nasty.

My computer just recovered from a massive spyware attack.

It began late last saturday night...

The Invasion

I was browsing using internet explorer (my mistake) trying to download some wallpaper from "Pirates of the Caribean 2", a movie that I just watched that evening.

I clicked on a wallpaper and there goes the popup!

The norton antivirus detected a trojan, but failed to clean it.

It took me a couple of seconds to realize whats happening and pull out the LAN cable out, effectively disconnecting myself from the net.

But that short interval of time was enough, thanks to the high speed internet connection, plenty of spyware got installed into my hard disk, within that time.

The Spread

The downloader trojan, once activated, downloads plenty of other spyware along with it, and executes them.

Understandably all the extra load was slowing down things

I did a search in windows drive to check all the files created and modified at the time of infection and was really surprised at the number of files created! Some with random names!

Within the first few seconds, they were all over the place - the windows registry, drives, they made new folders, installed browser objects, modified startup, generated new windows services...

I watched in horror as the malware invasion took place, the net was disconnected, but the damage was done.

I reconnected to the net and saw popups coming, nothing, not even a firewall could stop them.

Soon, the spyware took over my computer.

The War

Ok enough is enough...I decided, now its time to fight back!

I declared war on all malware!

I reconnected to the net, booted Windows in Safe Mode, armed with many antispyware and antivirus tools, I launched an all out offensive at the malware.

The Termination

Recovery was not easy, as I deleted more files, it created new ones with random names.

First I cleared the startup choices, stopped the services,

Then, I cleaned the disk with all the popular spyware softwares, (one software is not enough for all)

Manually searched and deleted all remaining files created at that time of infection.

Cleaned up the windows registry.

After nearly 12 hours of cleanup exercise, I terminated them all!

No more popups, No more slowing down, No more browser hijacks, No more spyware

Recovery & Control

This time the battle is won.

Now I run a couple of Antispyware software in the background, they provide realtime protection and let me know of any spyware-like activity.

Are they enough to prevent further attacks by malware? Well, not really, you are not safe until you switch off the computer and the other digital gadgets - which is ofcourse not an option.

The spread of malware, including spyware and virus, will continue to come even in greater numbers.

Complete prevention or complete cure may not be always possible, but they can be controlled.

We will continue the fight and will eventually win.