Cleaning up after WMF exploit – is it clean?
So, I’ve got most of the baddies cleaned out and I’m not getting popups anymore. No nags on boot, the boot process is quicker, but is it really clean? I found a few files (winlogon.exe, alg.exe in particular) that could be legitimate windows file names. Am I running the good one, or the trojan? That is exactly why a clean install is usually the best treatment for a badly infested system. Ultimately to trust this cleaned system a bit better I would need to. Watch it for signs of peculiar network ports open or peculiar processes…..
Replace the suspected system files with known good copies from the Windows install disc or similar source (sp2 install), etc. ultimately I don’t know how long it would take to really say you could “trust” the platform again until it was wiped clean and reinstalled. The best advice if you’re considering a clean up like this is to think of it as a temporary step to control the infestation and get important files off.
Also, I would need to run antivirus scans on and off for some time (with updates) to increase my confidence that it’s clean. Anti-Spyware scans would be good as well.
There is at least one of step that I have failed to document in this series so far… I’ll deal with that in the next article.