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Scams

by Mike Masnick

Fri, Apr 30th 2004 11:30am





Latest Spyware Even More Evil

from the not-good dept

Last year we wrote about how some fairly evil spyware called Xupiter was making the rounds, installing itself without alerting the user, changing homepages and generally causing a nuisance. Well, it appears things are getting even worse. Wired News is now reporting on an even more evil piece of spyware called CoolWebSearch that does all of the above plus more. It will disable your ability to visit websites that tell you how to remove it. It disable certain firewalls. Plus, it appears to get constant updates for itself. It's gotten to the point where some who have ended up with it say their computers have become useless.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Just a reminder

    identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, Apr 30th, 2004 @ 12:23pm

    Just a reminder to everyone - don't wait until you're infected to try and get the tools you need.

    Go now and get at least two different spyware tools (I recommend Ad-Aware and Spybot: Search and Destroy) and HijackThis!.

    You should also double-check to make sure you have all the latest updates to your AV software. If you're not too concerned about copyrights you can find all sorts of great deals on Symantec/Norton tools on ebay, many of which are just a CD without a manual, but they work.

    The time to worry about infection is before it's too late!

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Needs ritual purification once infected

    identicon
    data64, Apr 30th, 2004 @ 4:02pm

    The process is illustrated in this vintage penny arcade.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    AdAware

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Apr 30th, 2004 @ 10:37pm

    Actually, it missed some things for me. I find Webroot's SpySweeper pretty good: now its running full-time on my system though I've yet to buy the subscription.

    I had a keystroke logger on my system that 3 programs, including AdAware and Norton AV missed. SpySweeper caught it and took it out.

    Yes, HiJack This is VERY useful, too!

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: Just a reminder

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, May 11th, 2004 @ 11:40am

    Stop using IE. Switch to Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird. http://www.mozilla.org/ It's free, it's better and it doesn't support ActiveX (the culprit in many spyware/virus means of installation).

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Spyware

    identicon
    Mark Anthony Molina, May 30th, 2005 @ 7:16pm

    Hi, I think my PC is infected with this spyware. I cant use Internet Explorer. Everytime I launce IE, it redirects to another search engine that does nothing. Someone told me to download the AniSpyware from Microsoft. I did it so and it detected some. Removed them. But the problem still exists. I still can use IE. Can you halp me how to fix this?

    Many thanks,
    Mark

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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