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A new record !

By gbrownlee ·
I worked on the most infected system I have ever seen yesterday. The user called and stated that the pc had the following problem: Only while connected to the internet, between 5 and 15 minutes later, a window would pop up similar to sasser, but not quite and would say the system will reboot in 30 seconds. Which it did.

This system is 2 years old and running xp home. During this time, it has never had virus protection, no windows updates were installed and the HDD had never been defragged.

I ran ad-aware SE. spybot S&D, spyware blaster and AVG 7.0 free version. There was lots of spyware, but the astouding thing was, on its first pass, AVG picked out a who's who list of viruses, trojans and worms. There was 1246 infected files!

Greg

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Impressive

by house In reply to A new record !

The new record, I think, is that it was up for 2 years. Impressive.

Didn't they find that the computer was running a little slow?

I've seen that many viruses before, but it is usually the same strain.

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Slow wasn't the word for it.....

by gbrownlee In reply to Impressive

When I turned on the system, it took so long to boot up, that I could have gone home for a coffee and quick shave, and returned in time for the desktop to appear.

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Sounds like fun

by house In reply to Slow wasn't the word for ...

I hope the client wasn't concerned about data.

Did you fight the attacks and clean it up? Or did you say - too bad, we're starting from scratch.

Was there data to backup? This is one of those cases where I would have quoted them so much, they would have said "wipe it out". Sure it would have been fun, but time is money.

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Its a typical problem nowadays

by gbrownlee In reply to Sounds like fun

I run into this sort of thing more than any other problem. Before working on the system, I told the client that a fresh OS installation might be the only permanent solution. She opted for the cheaper quick bandaid approach. Gotta love those farmers; but then, Albertas farmers are hurting units nowadays and don't have any extra bucks to spend.

As for saving data, it was and still is readily accessible.

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HOLY!

by Oz_Media In reply to A new record !

My record is in the high 600's, but never seen 1200!

Gotta love THOSE clients, they keep the invoices rolling out.

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it's bad, but . . .

by apotheon In reply to HOLY!

I've run across a computer at a client site that had about 3600 discrete security issues. About two hundred were tracking cookies. The rest was virus infected files, worms, trojans, spyware and adware, browser helper object exploits, and so on. The same office had another system that was running something in the range of 2400 such problems.

This sort of thing is where I make most of my money, though the numbers I saw on that day were truly humbling. Before that, I'd never seen a system top out at over four hundred. 3600 just blew my mind.

This office was in an industry that labors under legislated security and privacy protection standards, too.

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Makes you wonder............

by dafe2 In reply to it's bad, but . . .

Doesn't something like that make your blood boil?

It's my belief that 85% of security is user common sense & awareness.

Does Sarbane/Oxley adress this stuff down your way? (Curious) It's PIPEDA in Canada & doesn't refer to anything more specific that "due dilligence".

Gotta love those stores that ask for your "name for the receipt".

Mines been "Smith" since the XT......

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I can't comment on viruses but

by jardinier In reply to A new record !

the slowest computer that ever passed through my hands was 92 per cent unfragmented.

Can anyone beat that?

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Now what?

by jjoaq In reply to I can't comment on viruse ...

I have cleaned many computers with spybot, AVG, and ad-aware. Most times that I use these products, the computer is still slow, erratic and useless. I most always have to save the data and do a clean install of the operating system. What is your experience?

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Know that was fun

by Swampdoc In reply to A new record !

Had one a couple of weeks ago that had 693 virii loaded on it (to include several varities of Netski, Sasser, Bagle and Mydoom) but the real kicker was the 12,245 spyware/adware/malware files it had. The word run had nothing to do with this system. Took almost 2 days to get it cleaned (couldn't **** it away as had "important data" on it)

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