PC-Armor Computer Security News Blog

Welcome to our new Site!

If you have been to our site before, you probably noticed the new look.  We have been working long and hard on the new design, which explains why we haven’t posted many blogs lately; but now we’re done!  If you have a chance, check out the new “University” page, where we have introduced video tutorials to help you, the user, through the complex process of hardening your Microsoft Windows XP environment to the point where it will be quite secure.

At this time, we have only made two videos available: Email and Web Browser Security.  However, we will be uploading more new videos soon showing you how to:

1. Turn off unnecessary and potentially harmful Windows services,
2. Install and configure a world-class Anti-spyware program,
3. Install and configure a world-class Anti-Virus program,
4. Install and configure a world-class firewall program,
5. Install, configure, and use a world-class encryption program,
6. Install and configure a secure Wireless network,
7. Install and configure a simple, but effective and cost-efficient backup solution,
8. and other important security-related topics

All of our videos are downloadable and viewable with Microsoft Windows Media Player.  This will allow you to play them, pause them, rewind them, or do just about anything you need to learn the content.

We are confident these videos will help raise the level of security for everyone who purchases them.

Be Safe.  Be secure!

PC-Armor.com

Firefox 3 is now available!

The Mozilla site experienced some technical difficulties [this morning] that delayed the scheduled launch of Firefox 3; however, they are back!

I just downloaded my version and will install it after this post.

Hopefully, the world will follow suit and download the greatest browser available…

Blog Spam is a HUGE Headache!

Blog spam has reached the point where it is very difficult to manage.  It is possible that we might accidentally delete a legitimate comment as we sift through the hundreds of blog spam we receive on a regular basis, so we apologize if we mistakenly delete a legitimate comment.

As with other types of spam, we scrutinize all comments very carefully before deciding to publish them.

Cheers!

PC-Armor.com

Nasty Trojan causes Task Manager and Registry Editor to stop working

I received a call from a friend over the weekend asking for help to rid his neighbor’s computer of a nasty Trojan.  Apparently, he had been working on the problem for days and didn’t know what else he could do, so I took a look and it was indeed a nasty infection.  The computer had McAfee and Norton security products installed, but they apparently didn’t help prevent the infection, so we removed them and installed CounterSpy and F-Secure.

What happened was the Trojan hijacked the desktop and changed it to a Bright Red background with a warning stating that the computer was infected with a malicious program and provided a link to for the user to click to purchase a program that would clean the computer.  Obviously, this was not a legitimate link, so I copied the link location to notepad and it pointed to hxxp://antispyspider.us/69.  DO NOT GO TO THIS LINK, IT IS VERY BAD!  Some other things this infection did was change the IP address and subnet mask; disabled the Task Manager and Registry Editor; and caused Internet Explorer to launch every couple of minutes to connect to the malicious site.  There was also a service that was added to the computer and it launched when Windows XP started.

The steps we used to try and defeat this nasty infection included:

- Running “msconfig” to disable all programs from starting
- Disabled the “Service” that was installed
- Turned off the System Restore feature, since we didn’t want anything malicious to be included in a restore
- Installed and ran CounterSpy, which found many malicious files, registry entries, and cookies.  We removed everything successfully

But we could not kill the Trojan, so I googled “AntiSpySpider” and found a very good web page showing how to kill this critter and if you need the instructions, you can get them from:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/malware-removal/antispyspider

The fix includes running a program to restore the registry editor, as well as a file to restore the task manager.  The instructions do a great job showing the victim how to remove this threat, so if you are one of the unfortunate souls, try this fix.  Then if you get it removed, you might consider running CounterSpy and F-Secure Internet Security; both of these programs have been quite dependable protecting our computers, as well as people we know.