Flu Shot of the week

[Minkseru]

 

OK I have been dealing with wonderful hateful ransom ware on a coworker's friend's computer, and other various issues such as Trojans and such.  So I figured the best way to deal with this was to start a topic on what to do when you have such nonsense on your computer.
 
Going to try to set up links now to link to the various flu shots in this topic :
Ransom Ware:
Trojans:
Firewalls:
System Recovery:
Anti viruses pt.1:

Blue Screen of Death:
 
So this week is a discussion on something termed "Ransom ware":
Ransom ware is annoying because it blocks out your computer claiming you have to pay them money to unblock your computer.  The one I was dealing with recently was the "FBI ransom ware"  It claims you have done illegal activity, and that the FBI has blocked your computer.  You supposedly owe them a "fine" and their logo and everything looks nice and spiffy complete with a email of [email protected].
  Trying to restart your computer is frustrating because within 4-5 seconds of starting up your computer locks itself out with a nice audio sound of the FBI has blocked your computer.  You can not access safe mode or its strains
  Solution:  restart holding down F8 and F7 or tapping repeatedly, some computers are f8 and some are f7 so this should launch you into what you need.  go down to diagnose drive or drive diagnosis, and it will go ahead and scan your c:/ drive, it will see nothing wrong, and send you into safe mode.  From here go into your start menu, and choose run type in "msconfig" sans ".  go to start up, and disable all.  Then on the general tab tell it to start in diagnostic mode.  Then restart your computer.  Next if you are lucky all you will have to do is install a new antivirus, as the ransom ware configures itself as "safe" on all your current antiviruses, and have it do a full system scan.  make sure this is selected as EVERYTHING being scanned.  this virus mostly puts .pf files and a few other odd extensions.  also it puts 01.mp3 somewhere on your computer.  I say somewhere because it will throw a lot of these files in random spots.  there will be a few odd start up items it makes.
  Look for files with random letters and numbers in your windows file.
Mind you if the antivirus did it's job you will not have to worry about any of the above .
 
This has been your flu shot of the week .

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Dark_Angel13]

Thanks for the info man, I always like knowing little things like this just in case something does happen one day =)

[Minkseru]

 

Today we are going to cover Trojans.

(this is last weeks shot, but I got a bit swamped early at the beginning so I will have two of these this week.)

 

Trojans are some of the easiest to avoid, and also the most picked up, next to spyware probably .  These viruses are themselves not malignant, but serve the purpose of collecting friends to your computer.  The viruses it brings with it are more commonly Malware.

 

The best way to fight the Trojan virus group is to never let it hit your computer, or even while on your computer a heavily enforced firewall will detect them.  Antivirus software will wipe Trojans most of the time.

 

When you suspect you have a Trojan turn your internet access off, either grab an antivirus software, or use the one already installed on your computer if you have one.  Run a full system scan, as most viruses often hide in unthought of folders, and let it wipe your computer .

 

This has been your flu shot of last week .

 

(Expect the next one by Saturday .)

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Dark_Angel13]

Already knew all this stuff for this week Mink but still very helpful tips, also just a little addon to what you said. If it gets to the point where the Trojan virus has epically fucked your computer up to the point where you may not even be able to run it properly or at all there are ways to fix that. You can often use certain programs that will kick in when you boot up your computer.

 

Some include: AVG Rescue CD, Avira Rescue System, Kaspersky Rescue Disk. Not trying to steal any of your thunder here Mink just popping in a little addon incase people may someday really get their computer stuffed up. Those ones I mentioned may not be the most modern ones now but there are programs out there that do it =)

Edited February 1, 2013 by Dark_Angel13

[Minkseru]

Already knew all this stuff for this week Mink but still very helpful tips, also just a little addon to what you said. If it gets to the point where the Trojan virus has epically fucked your computer up to the point where you may not even be able to run it properly or at all there are ways to fix that. You can often use certain programs that will kick in when you boot up your computer.

 

Some include: AVG Rescue CD, Avira Rescue System, Kaspersky Rescue Disk. Not trying to steal any of your thunder here Mink just popping in a little addon incase people may someday really get their computer stuffed up. Those ones I mentioned may not be the most modern ones now but there are programs out there that do it =)

Not a problem by all means steal my thunder .

I started this topic because people keep not understanding what they have done to their computer let alone how to fix it.  If you want to throw in an article every now and again that would be great have one mroe this week if I can pull it off right. 

[† Emotional Outlet]

Ye, not everyone is tech savvy; it helps to reach out to those who feel they are not capable and prove them to them that they are capable. I'm gonna sticky this unless someone thinks otherwise.

 

[Alice]

Ye, not everyone is tech savvy; it helps to reach out to those who feel they are not capable and prove them to them that they are capable. I'm gonna sticky this unless someone thinks otherwise.

 

I think that's a wonderful idea, EO!  This is something that is wonderful to have to look at when you aren't tech savvy.  Of course there are different forms of tech savvy.  Anyways, it is great to have something to give you info if you should ever have the problem with your computer.

[Dark_Angel13]

I dunno about an article but I can throw in few little addons every now and then just to give some more information. It is a good idea to sticky this I think, I'm pretty sure Mink won't have a problem answering questions if people ask about the stuff he's mentioned which is always better then just trying to work it out for yourself especially when it comes to a virus infested computer.

 

@Dreamcastor, True there are different types of tech savvy but for the most part things still overlap and the things Mink is doing can affect everyone regardless of what they do or may know, I've met a fair few people in IT who only know the ONE thing they've been taught how to do, other then that their clueless to anything

[Minkseru]

 

OK the official flu shot for this week is more so on the actual protection of your computer.

 

This week's topic will be on: Firewalls.

 

Ok now a few questions I am sure come to mind, and I am going to presume that not everyone necessarily know what a firewall is, or it's functionality.

So a few borrowed definitions before we begin.

Wikipedia: Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts

techtarget.com:  A firewall is a set of related programs, located at a network gateway server, that protects the resources of a private network from users from other networks.

pcmag:  A firewall allows or blocks traffic into and out of a private network or the user's computer.

 

Ok now that we have the generic term down.  Let us look at what exactly this means to the end user.  I know I have suggested as part of the fix updating your firewall, and this is because a firewalls job is to get permission for everything to talk out or to your network.  You being on the internet is something that the firewall patrols.  When you get spyware on your computer it sends out information to another network, Trojans get information from other networks to put things on your computer.  Both viruses and useful applications ultimately come from the network.

So what the firewall does is tells you every time something is trying to send information from your computer, or receive information to your computer.

So the next question naturally is going to be well, if this firewall is so important what would you suggest.

So a small list of great, freeware, firewalls first:

 

Zone Alarm:

http://www.zonealarm.com/

 

Comodo:

personalfirewall.comodo.com/

 

I have not fiddled with the latter as much.

My suggestion though is to set to strict mode to begin with or manually update everything to start.  If you are unwilling to take the time or just do not have that kind of patience you can set most firewalls to a mode called learning where it keeps an eye on your normal activity and asks for anything out of the ordinary.

If you do set to strict you will have to lower to medium once you get everything set up in zone alarm, otherwise it will not let you access your internet .

Why you want to set to strict to begin with is to see everything trying to transmit data from your computer or trying to access your computer.  This is important because you may already have background spyworms, keyloggers, or trojans.  If any of the above are you can deny it's access and figure out what is going on.

 

Some point will have to write an article on antiviral software.

 

This has been your official flu shot of the week.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Dark_Angel13]

Firewalls can also be a real pain in the ass when you're putting on a new one and then you try to go and game through steam or something, so much allowing and all that stuff. It just gets repetitive and annoying lol. Good stuff man

[Xanders]

This is great i finally ended my curiosity of Firewall's definition

[Minkseru]

I am the kind of person that likes the repetitive allowance the first time or so.  Means my firewall is doing it's job

[Dark_Angel13]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm glad it does it but I just hate allowing everything... so lazy lol

[Minkseru]

 

Ok (This week start/last week end did not get this submitted in time on Saturday)  will be a point I did not think I needed to bring up, but as I am having a problem with a large number of peoples computers on this issue.  So this week we will talk about making a reset button.

 

Welcome to System Recovery:

 

Ok first off let us clarify exactly why we would do this:  This is something you do when your computer is to that point where nothing seems to be getting rid of the virus, you can't bring up your computer Operating System, or any other number of reasons where your computer no longer is running in the way it is supposed to, and you can not seem to fix it.

 

Setting a Restore point is rather easy.  So we will go from how I know to get there in XP.

Go to your start menu, go to Run, type restore, and this will bring you to the Restore folder.

You should see an item that has an icon that looks like a computer, called rstrui.

Open the Application rstrui.

This will bring you to the System Recovery page.  Select make a restore point.

Make sure to name it something so you know why you did the restore point.  For instance "Month of May added."

When you restart your computer, on the load screen it should have an option for System Recovery.

Otherwise go with F10 or F11.

Or go with F8/F7 to go to your load options where it should be.

System Recovery will walk you through the rest

 

This has been your Flu Shot of the Week.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Hawkester]

I quite literally read the article and checked that I had a recent system restore point. Cheers Mink.

Though I think only some bug from an update could cause me to use this restore point.

ZoneAlarm seems to do an excellent job at protecting my computer

Edited February 14, 2013 by Hawkester

[Minkseru]

 

Ok for this weeks Flu Shot of the week:

We are covering antiviruses pt.1,

and some common misconceptions.

Ok first off let us cover a few definitions...

 

Wikipedia:  Antivirus or anti-virus software is software used to prevent, detect and remove malware (of all descriptions)

About.com: "antivirus" is protective software designed to defend your computer against malicious software.

 

Ok a few key notes to antiviruses, one of which is that antivirus software does not mean it will cure the computer of the virus.  antiviruses are designed to scan, quarantine, and try to delete the viruses it knows of.  It will not restore a file, which there are possibilities of, not in the antiviral software world though. 

 

So I guess we need to look at why this would even matter...

 

Some viruses ransomware for instance runs a type of engine called: "polymorphic" which literally at each distribution of it rewrites part of it's core to not look like other copies of the virus.

This makes it noticeably harder to scan for it.  There is a chance as well when it is something like a rootkit virus, one of the few you would find on linux among others, that actually give them self administrative rights making itself invisible to your taskbar, and also to public users.

 

It does remove a large quantity of viruses though.  So the first part of antiviruses is to figure out what it is an antivirus does do.

 

An antivirus has it's own for now we will call it dictionary, and this dictionary tells it every virus it knows, against these it checks against.  If any of these are found in the scan if will quarantine it to allow you to decide what to do with it.  Viruses now scanned for and placed in the nice rubber room you get to see what you caught.

 

Most every antivirus will give the let it free option, and delete option.  Because of viruses like rootkit and the like out often missed.

 

Next Week NSOD<

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Minkseru]

 

Welcome to this week's Flu Shot:

(Apologies just trying to find enoughj valid information to assist my own required a mental defrag >.>)

 

  Today we speak on the Blue Screen of Death.  This is probably the most commonly known issue Windows gives it's users, unless you had a Windows Vista in which case the screen is red.  Technically the error shows up when your computer runs into an error somewhere in the code.  The irony being this problem most often has persisted with myself, and my wife when our games require too much on the graphics end.  Concerns to watch out for, while the blue-screen is caused by missing code me and my wife have seen it when a game has overloaded the capacity of your Graphics card or Ram.

 

  Now regardless of that, we have the issue that presses of how do we fix this issue, and why does it need to be fixed sooner than later?  I will need to answer the latter before the former.  The Blue screen of death, also known as Deadscreen, was lovingly named by the company we all know and "love" IBM.  IBM was running beta tests on the original OS/2 design in conjunction with a company called Big Blue, the company lovingly called it the Blue Screen of Death due to the color of the screen, and the fact that while in it you can do nothing, but manually restart your computer.

 

  This issue while numerous in what it tells you creates a dump file with information on the stop code error.  This in the hands of someone who knows computers well enough would enable it so they can fix the computer based on the information in the "memory dump file"; we are going to call this "MDF" for the remainder of this report.  What problems this can cause especially if the error codes are in large part due to overheating is that your parts are very much losing internal information.  Last time I had a blue screen of death on my 98, I went to reload to a lack of operating system.  I had lost enough of the code for the system that it no longer recognized itself, a graphics card, ram card, and hard drive replacement later the machine worked great, which reminds me there are actually viruses, admittedly old, but are viruses that part of their coding is written to "replace" registry files with their own, and in some cases can cause keys on your keyboard in a particular grouping to do commands not originally intended.  A for instance of that is had a computer at school if you hit "Shift G" would wipe your entire paper.

 

  Hardware frying, and file replacement shenanigans aside we come to why the blue screen of death is useful.  It's job is both on that screen, and in the MDF, to tell you a general reason of why it had to "stop".  The stop code generated will generally always be in hexadecimal, and informs you of what the problem is.  A good example would be: 

 

STOP Error 0x00000007: INVALID_SOFTWARE_INTERRUPT STOP Error 0x00000067: CONFIG_INITIALIZATION_FAILED STOP Error 0xDEADDEAD: MANUALLY_INITIATED_CRASH1

(Thanks go to pcsupport.about.com for the borrowed examples)

 

This is where we run into the situation discussed above, repairing the issue is your FIRST priority.  The second error message for example would tell you a driver did not do what it was supposed to do.  The bottom one is actually someone modified the registry files for the keyboard commands so that ctrl hold, scroll down, scroll down, in quick succession would cause a forced Blue Screen of Death.  I will understandably not be posting how to do that here.  However the pcsupport site has how to do that if you feel you must pursue the information.

 

This is also why I had to defrag trying to solve how to tackle this project.  I instead of telling you directly how to fix every single Blue Screen of Death, will rather give you a link to every code generated by BSoD, and if you run into a code you need fixed I will also be linking my inbox for this forum here now:

 

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/tp/stop_error_list.htm

http://forums.kametsu.com/index.php?/topic/35387-flu-shot-of-the-weeks-inbox/?p=297363

 

This has been your Flu Shot of the Week, and with this I now go and again mentally defrag.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Dark_Angel13]

Nice one this week man, lots of good info

[Xanders]

Awesome, now i finally knew what happened to my old Win ME, i missed it already...

[Minkseru]

Will be posting this weeks topic tomorrow.

 

My apologies   This week has been short of hell.  Third time on the PSU and Motherboard, had to clean off the thermal paste from the processing chip and fan to relay it...

So I am a bit behind on everything.  Will either discuss RAM and it's importance to your computer, or continue my antivirus discussions...

 

Thank you and will have your flu shot of the week up shortly