I've Been 0wned(!)
Had I known what was coming, I would have saved my previous pessimistic post for this week, when it was well warranted.
I fielded a number of distressful phone calls from close family, and I fell off the wagon in terms of diet and exercise. But what I want to share with you today is how being ‘social’ turned me into a zombie.
At some point last month I opened a malicious file and it went to work decimating my desktop. I knew almost immediately that I was infected with a worm or virus when I typed a keyword into a search engine and was redirected to another fake directory. I never clicked on any of the links, but I did something just a stupid: I clicked the red box in the top right corner to close it, thereby allowing the malware to zoom zoom zoom through my previously pristine circuitry, leaving bits of bad code in its wake.
I continually ran what is supposed to be superior antivirus software, but the malware seemed to always be one step ahead. I now know that’s because it was disabling the AV and throwing up ominous sounding warnings purporting to be from Microsoft’s Security Center. The giveaway: The warnings in the toolbar and dialog boxes always contained exclamation marks. The real Microsoft rarely uses them!
That’s when I knew this had worked its way to the root and that I was in real trouble. It meant that I might clean up the crap code through scans and quarantines but every time I rebooted my computer, it would return. And it did. It logged all of my keystrokes and recorded all of my passwords, including those linked to my bank. It hijacked addressed and spewed spam in my name, and it almost certainly was taken over by cybercriminals to launch attacks en mass. We call those machines zombies.
The solution is to wipe out the machine, reformat and reinstall applications. This is both time-consuming and disheartening because you always lose stuff you don’t think you’ll miss. It’s also embarrassing when it happens at work because people privately think of you as the promiscuous user you are.
But part of the reason I started this blog six years ago this month was to provide a public service to users via information security. It’s maybe time I move a little more toward that mission again.
Next up: How I think it happened, and how to keep such an infestation from happening to you.
I fielded a number of distressful phone calls from close family, and I fell off the wagon in terms of diet and exercise. But what I want to share with you today is how being ‘social’ turned me into a zombie.
At some point last month I opened a malicious file and it went to work decimating my desktop. I knew almost immediately that I was infected with a worm or virus when I typed a keyword into a search engine and was redirected to another fake directory. I never clicked on any of the links, but I did something just a stupid: I clicked the red box in the top right corner to close it, thereby allowing the malware to zoom zoom zoom through my previously pristine circuitry, leaving bits of bad code in its wake.
I continually ran what is supposed to be superior antivirus software, but the malware seemed to always be one step ahead. I now know that’s because it was disabling the AV and throwing up ominous sounding warnings purporting to be from Microsoft’s Security Center. The giveaway: The warnings in the toolbar and dialog boxes always contained exclamation marks. The real Microsoft rarely uses them!
That’s when I knew this had worked its way to the root and that I was in real trouble. It meant that I might clean up the crap code through scans and quarantines but every time I rebooted my computer, it would return. And it did. It logged all of my keystrokes and recorded all of my passwords, including those linked to my bank. It hijacked addressed and spewed spam in my name, and it almost certainly was taken over by cybercriminals to launch attacks en mass. We call those machines zombies.
The solution is to wipe out the machine, reformat and reinstall applications. This is both time-consuming and disheartening because you always lose stuff you don’t think you’ll miss. It’s also embarrassing when it happens at work because people privately think of you as the promiscuous user you are.
But part of the reason I started this blog six years ago this month was to provide a public service to users via information security. It’s maybe time I move a little more toward that mission again.
Next up: How I think it happened, and how to keep such an infestation from happening to you.
