Computer Tips -Tech Info

Sorry, but to get into the guts of what I found in the wake of the WMF exploit, I did leave out another important step in the cleanup process. IF you are trying to clean up an infested machine one of the first real goals has to be disabling system restore. (start, (settings,) control panel, […]

I haven’t checked to see if these are already on other block lists for the WMF exploit, but the following addresses are advised to be blocked (from f-secure)…. toolbarbiz[dot]biz toolbarsite[dot]biz toolbartraff[dot]biz toolbarurl[dot]biz buytoolbar[dot]biz buytraff[dot]biz iframebiz[dot]biz iframecash[dot]biz iframesite[dot]biz iframetraff[dot]biz iframeurl[dot]biz    Send article as PDF   

One other note from the previous series on WMF exploit infestation cleanup. Among the multiple popups that came when launching internet explorer, most were directed at the site http://60.topnssearch.com –    Send article as PDF   

Can I say enough times that after a bad trojan infestation you should format and reinstall? I’ve cleaned up the infested image that I “sacrificed” to the WMF exploit and as I’ve said you’re pestware install will likely be somewhat different. An exploit is just the road, the spyware and viruses are the cars. Once […]

Browser helper objects (BHO’s) are listed in the registry and load with explorer when it runs (Internet Explorer/ File explorer are so closely tied it affects both.) I’ve used BHOdemon in the past to identify and disable BHO’s and a tool like that is the preferred method. However, in my case, this is a disposable […]

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 […]

On the next boot I was greeted with the above message C:\windows\system32\kernels64.exe not found please make sure the path……correct…. blah blah blah. Back to msconfig. Everything there now looks clean. I check the running processes, again everything there looks clean I don’t see anything that I’ve been fighting. So, I start the registry editor (start, […]

At this point, I needed to rename or delete some files that windows would not let me touch. I had this winlogon.exe running from a suspect directory c:\windows\inet20001 and windows wouldn’t let me kill it, or remove it’s start entry in the registry. So, I booted my image from a dsl linux cd and opted […]

OK, so, I’m busy killing off running processes and fire up MSConfig to try to keep them from coming back on the next boot. To launch msconfig go to start, run… type in msconfig and click ok. The startup tab is where we’re looking for programs running at startup (makes sense…) This is a bit […]

After getting into Task Manager I saw a number of suspicious processes. There were a lot of things running as my user that I didn’t recognize. kernels64.exe, vxgame6.exe, vxgame4.exe, mm4.exe, vxh8jkdq2.exe, netsh.exe, cmd.exe, winstall.exe, vxgamet4.exe, vxgame2.exe covers most of the list of suspect entries. netsh and cmd are both legit programs, but were likely being […]