Careless Facebook profiling can lead to Identity Theft!

By Paul | Feb 19, 2009

I just got in contact with a old friend from High school and another friend of mine suggest the new friend. I was looking at her profile and couldn’t believe what I saw:

Something users shouldn't do!!!As you can see this is not good I was amazed at how many people are giving out there birthdays and who they are married to to friends and family. So we heard about how people are claiming they need help or are in need of desperate money. This is nothing new, as you know people are having hard economy times and people are using the social engineering to scam people out of money.

I feel that I should warn people the important necessity.   You shouldn’t be broadcasting your DOB and who your married to to your friends, just in case they get hacked.

Recent activity indicates that identity thieves are hacking into trustworthy profiles before selling on the login details to interested parties. This information is used by spammers to target legitimate users, posting misleading links on their “walls” – personalized message boards.

[Via Computing.Co.UK]

Tools for Virus Removal : The ones I like to use!

By Paul | Dec 15, 2008

In this post I want to talk about virus removal tools that I like to use when I need to remove a virus.   Some thing to consider when using these tools are:

Each of these have to be dealt with differently because each requires something different.  Like rootkits if you have one installed and know that it is a rootkit you only options are to download some rootkit removers like:

  • Sopho’s Anti-rootkit remover –  This is good for those more known viruses and can remove several types of rootkits.   This isn’t the only one I use, but it is a part of group that does the rootkit removing for me.
  • Microsoft Rootkit Revealer –  This is good for proving there is a rootkit.  I’ve not seen it not detect a rootkit.  Most of the time when I find a rootkit from the other rootkit revealers this one actually dos better with information.
  • Panda Anti-Rootkit Remover — This one is another one I use when the other ones can’t remove it.  Each one does remove certain rootkit differently and works better than the other.

Removing Win32/Bagle.HE worm

By Paul | Dec 15, 2008

Here is another virus that seems to be spreading lately.   From the looks of it, it sees to be another email worm.  Here is what eset says:

Aliases

Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gt (Kaspersky), W32/Bagle.gen (McAfee), Trojan.Tooso!gen (Symantec)

Win32/Bagle.HE is a worm that spreads via e-mail. The size of its executable is 40565 B .

When executed the worm copies itself in the following locations:

  • Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\hidn\
    hldrrr.exe
  • Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\hidn\
    hidn2.exe

In order to be executed on every system start, the worm sets the following Registry entry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\drv_st_key

It seems to have a manual removal process, Unless you pay for the other software but according to the 411 on PC Security:

Win32/Bagle.HE worm is a “threat” that appears in security scans by fake antispyware WinDefender 2008.

The danger of Win32/Bagle.HE worm is supposed to scare you into wasting $49.95 on WinDefender 2008.

Unless you like getting ripped off, don’t download the software the Win32/Bagle.HE worm popup links to. You’re not really infected with Win32/Bagle.HE worm — you’re infected with scamware that you need to remove.

I’ll show you how to get rid of Win32/Bagle.HE worm and WinDefender 2008, for free.

Fix Shutdown Problems in Vista!

By Paul | Dec 10, 2008


In the Patch Tuesday update, Microsoft quietly released the patch to fix Windows Vista machine shut problems. This patch should of came sooner.

KB957388

Update for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista

Install this update to resolve a set of known application compatibility issues with Windows Server 2008. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

This was not a critical update and it seems to resolve so many issues with compatibility.  One thing it seemed to fix on my system has been the shutdown time.  It is now quite fast, it would normally take me 2 to 3 mins to shutdown, now it does it in less than a Minute.   So if you’ve not installed this update please install it soon.   I would like to know if people are seeing the same thing I am.   I’ve found a great resource on fixing it if you are still having problem, it talks about how to check your system performance. Although this is been doing it lately with these programs not loaded or even running, they still seem to cause problems so now I get the feeling it has to do with legacy programs.  This should fix most of the problem with older programs.

Vista Sp2 Beta Still not up yet!

By Paul | Dec 4, 2008

In my vista-sp2-dec-42008.html/”>Previous article I talked about how you could be in the Beta, and I just checked this morning. It looks like they took that article down. I don’t know if they are changing it around or what but it will be. I hope they fix this soon. I would like to start testing this on my Virtual Machine first before I install it on my real machine!!  I will update this when they do get it up and running.

Windows 7 will sport Direct X 10 Compliance!

By Paul | Dec 2, 2008


The new feature is called WARP10, for “Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform,” and it’s essentially a DX10-compliant, software-only rasterizer that was written by Microsoft; it runs directly on the CPU. In a situation where a DX10 app needs to run but can’t find DX10-compliant hardware, it will run on WARP10, albeit very, very slowly. Ultimately, you can think of WARP10 as a “software DX10 GPU” that will exist as a fallback in Windows.

[via Arstechnica]

This will make Windows 7 work more smoothly with Windows XP and Vista games.   This looks to be like having more compatibility with the older games.   When Vista came out they were complaining about not being able to play games on Vista.   Vista has been really updated with being able to play games. People are starting to play games on a Vista machine.   This is also a step for Windows 7 to be one that Microsoft, being that they are trying to get the next O/s to look like an Angel probably.  What I expect is Microsoft will advertise about Windows 7 will be gamer friendly.   This is a move on Microsoft to get gamers on board with this release and to try to get people to forget about Vista.

Not so, Antivirus2008

By Laforge129 | Nov 28, 2008

On F-secure blog they talk about this rogue antispyware.

OK, so let’s say the user (by some stroke of luckless chance, or courtesy of a trojan downloader) ends up with the demo installer of Rogue:W32/VirusRemover2008.C on their hands and it runs
[via F-Secure]

According to them, they have many different version of this rogue antispyware.  They have de, dk, es, fr, it, no, nl, and no, which are all attempting for you to buy this no so Virusremover2008 software.  They talk about how it tells you have a 9 infected viruses and that you need to remove them, but in truth, they use a text file to create this lie.  Check out all the details for further information.

How to disable autorun the easy way!!!

By Paul | Nov 21, 2008

I read a report from Cnet about USB devices spreading Virus and I will quote:

The bad guys are intentionally developing new flavors of malware designed to propagate through USB devices,” said Gunter Ollmann, chief security strategist for IBM’s ISS security division. “They are today’s floppy drives.”

An infected computer can spread a virus to a clean USB thumb drive that is inserted. That USB drive will then be spreading the virus onto other computers if the operating system on those machines has an AutoRun-type feature enabled. The AutoRun function in Windows launches installers and other programs automatically when a flash drive or CD is inserted. The Mac has an equivalent function, according to Ollmann.

[Via Cnet]

In order to disable “autorun“, which in Vista is called Autoplay. In order to disable Autoplay from starting when you insert media into your computer here is how you do it:

You will need to be Logged in as Administrator before this can be done:

Next click start and type “Autoplay” without quotes. It will bring up a screen but all you have to worry about is this:

Vista autorun

Avg detected Trojan Horse Generic 12.htc?

By Paul | Nov 8, 2008


Just got a warning from AVG about, trojan horse generic 12.HTC, haven’t heard of it, anyone out there hear if this one? apparently it infects explore.exe, and after months of explore.exe crashing I’d say it’s a legit virus.

[Via Answer Bag]

Some tricks and tips to remove this little virus is quite simple. It is embedded in your system so how do you remove this threat? Easy follow these steps and you will have a better chance of getting rid of the virus:

  1. Find out all you can on the virus – Finding out the extent of where the virus lays is really a good idea.  Just because you found one place doesn’t mean it isn’t also hiding some other place.  Some good ways to figure out where it might be is to download Hijackthis and Then onces you download it and install.  Run it, and when you get the LOG file you will want to go to HijackThis Log Analysis Site 1 and HijackThis Log Analysis Site 2, and see what it says.

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