Warning -- New Malware epidemic "Windows Security 2010"

[Cankin]

I've seen this on another forum, and it maybe a good warning for us Windows users:

Warning -- New Malware epidemic "Windows Security 2010" - Telecaster Guitar Forum

[morphsci]

We already had this particular problem at EIU in December. It can be removed with persistence. I had to use Malwarebytes and Superantispyware in tandem. My Vista machine at home was only minimally affected and was easily cleaned. My XP workstation was a little harder to clean. My netbook running XP was a nightmare to clean up and it literally took about two weeks time to get rid of everything. It hit most of the machines on campus with the XP machines showing the most "damage" and the Win 7 machines showing essentially no problems. That is why I am going to "upgrade" my netbook to Win 7.

Edited February 20, 2010 by morphsci

[jeffreyj900]

I got this virus. Ended up have the guys re-image my laptop.....

[Iron_Dreamer]

Yeah, generally when I see crap like that, it ends up being more cost effective to just reload Windows on a customer's machine. Aside from the fact that they usually have a ton of other malware, OEM installed junk, Norton, and the like. I always look at things like Spybot or Malwarebytes as possible solutions, whereas reloading windows is a guaranteed solution that usually solves any other problems a user might be having, simultaneously.

[CarlSeibert]

My wife caught a variant of this bit of nastiness. What was frustrating, apart from having to deal with it at all, was that none of the lists of files and keys I found on the internet fit my version of the virus. What worked for me was finding something a bit odd looking in a "run" key in the registry and working backwards from there.

[Currawong]

I'd avoid visiting The Pirate Bay by the way, as friends have been reporting that their computers were infected by that site.

[skullguise]

^ Uhhhhm, yeah......

I have helped quite a few folks with these issues. I usually use a Pre-Install Windows Environment CD to boot and run checks from there, but there have been some cases where it won't load on a client machine. Twice now, I've been forced to remove the drive, mount it on another machine (USB adapter), and scan/clean it there.

The saddest/funniest thing I remember was helping one person, who was getting p*rn spam and popups about elderly folks and also animals! Couldn't help but wonder where he caught that drive-by....

[HDen]

I used to have Kaspersky but after testing a few keyloggers, virii, I tried Eset nod64, unfortunately it didn't catch all of the "programs" I tried with, in the end I ended up with Avira Anti-Virus, which is imo the best anti-vir out there. Of course if you already have spyware on your computer it will take a bit more to remove it...

[laxx]

I caught this about 2 months back. Took about 2 hours to get rid of. This happened at home on Vista 64. I was pretty surprised as I'm pretty careful with my internet usage, but oh well, if I had to, I was ready to install Win 7.

[Nebby]

Installing Win7 isn't too punishing of an experience, thankfully