Why you can’t run Antivirus or Taskmanager!

Photo by : Kristi Evans Photo by : Kristi Evans

As you know there has been more and more virus writers and scammers who don’t want you to interfere with the ultimate plan.   You see the two major plans these people have are:

  1. [intlink id=”2811″ type=”post”]To use your computer as a Botnet[/intlink] —  This is most common because the Command and Control server is where they tell these other computers what to do weather send spam or do a denial of Service attack on a website.  Although this is the most common it isn’t however the easiest to get rid of rid.   Far be it from being easy these virus writers want to keep a foot hold on your system.   This is like the SG-1 the “Foothold” Situation, they try to look like there is nothing wrong.
  2. [intlink id=”3805″ type=”post”]Fake Antivirus software[/intlink] — This is the other common reason why you can’t load up Taskmanager or SUPERantispyware/Malwarebytes.   It could even prevent AVG,  Norton Antivirus, and Other Antivirus software from being loaded at boot up.  Because most Antivirus software can detect this type of scareware.   The scammers want to make as much money as they can so they don’t want the End user to be able to stop the program from scaring you into buying the fake product.  It could also have a [intlink id=”3872″ type=”post”]Scareware Adviser[/intlink] trying to get you to buy the fake product!

As you can see these are what I call the Prime “2” reasons why you can’t run your Antivirus software, although there is a way around this.   I have found loading up in Safe Mode to be the easiest way to run antivirus scans on an infected system.   Although this can be difficult to do it, however it helps prevent these programs from loading up in more ways then one.  If you can go download the Antivirus programs from another computer and have them to install once you load up in safe mode.   You should also think about installing other software like a [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Firewall even the Free firewalls[/intlink] are the better than Microsoft’s Firewall.

[ad]The other options for those tech savy people who know what a hard drive is and how to remove it, is to mount it onto another system as a slave and then run your antivirus software on the hard drive in question.   This however shouldn’t be done unless two conditions are met:

  1. You Know what you doing —  Again if you don’t know what your doing please don’t try this.  It could hurt your system far more than you can know.   If you don’t know how to do this you should take it to a professional and let them do the work for you.
  2. Out of Warranty — Yep that is right if this has a 2 year or longer warranty and you open up the hardware you automatically void the warranty on anything to do with your system.  So it is best to have someone who is qualified warranty specialist to open it up.  This way you still have your warranty on the system and if something does go wrong in the shop, they can fix it easier than a novice.

If you know what your doing this can be an easy process or it can be a hard process it only depends on how knowledgeable you are and how far you are willing to go.   Although there are [intlink id=”2955″ type=”post”]some viruses that require you to just start over[/intlink].  This is because they have embedded so deeplyinto the system that removing them will ruin your Windows system and prevent it from booting in the first place.  This is the last option, if you have a system who has been overrun with virus and spyware it might be time to reinstall the Operating system.  This is what I call the end all way to get rid of the Virus, Trojan, Or spyware on your system.   If you do this you will need to make sure to install all the Microsoft updates before you do anything else.  Also you will need to [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]re-install any Firewalls and Antivirus[/intlink] software to better protect your system from having the virus in the first place.

Scareware Adviser from securitybrowseradviser.com

It looks like I have been added to this website but it is a fake URL Hijacker that wants to sponsor [intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]Personal Antivirus Just Scareware[/intlink]. Yep you guessed it they are blocking this url from trying to be displayed some of the people are still ignoring the warning and coming to my site  anyways.
securitybrowseradviser1

So the first question is how do I know this is a fake site warning. Well I did my research I went to Phishtank.com and check to see if my URL was being blocked. I also clicked the link to see what this link went “Activate my Web protection software”. It sent me to this site:

personalantivirus2

[ad]As you can see this site “ieprotectionlist.com” calls itself the [intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]Personal Antivirus[/intlink] and look it even says “Malicious behavior detected”. I start looking for anything about this software no links to contact them or no links to learn more about this product. This is how I know this is a scareware site. If you seem to be getting these warnings it is time to go download[intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”] real antivirus software[/intlink].

[ad]As you can see the Securitybrowseradviser.com is a scareware sponsor for the [intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]fake Personal Antivirus software[/intlink] that it is linking to. So if you getting this it is time to remove it.

I would Recommend SUPERAntivirus Pro although the Free version is good to remove this scareware or spyware. I have found it does find all the programs and where they are located. If you feel like you want to do it yourself be warned that is a cumbersome process and might hurt your system more than letting a program do it for you.

I will be doing a review of SUPERAntivirus Pro in the next few weeks, I do think it does the job plus more. When I do a scan with this product it actually finds more than expected.

Michael Jackson Malware on the Rise

In the last 24 hours the spammers and scammers have begun to distribute spam with the guise to:

    [ad]

  • Harvest Email Addresses —  This seems to used to ask users to respond to the email to get “top secret” information about how he died.  Security experts believe this is an attempt to verify email addresses for future spam attempts.   Although it isn’t wise to reply to people you don’t know about it at least has very little risk with your computer for the time being.
  • Fake Codecs and Hidden Trojans —  Seems this is the main thing they are doing right now to get personal computers on their networks.   So you should never visit a site you don’t know about without having an Anti-virus software and A firewall to better protect your system.
  • Extortion Ware — This one is very interesting, and According to Webroot.  You should avoid sites that you don’t know anything about.   With News of anything major you should keep with the trusted news sites.  This one looks to be the bad guy type.

These seem to be a common ploy with scammers and spammers who want to get money from you in one way or another.   I have been watching the Google searches and haven’t seen any malicious sites but I could of missed one here and there.

You should always have an [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] available to help protect your system from these types of attacks.   If you had some kind of protection to better protect your computer.  Remember no one can stop computer infections but you.

Mac Malware on the Rise drive by Downloads

Photo by Incase Designs Photo by Incase Designs

More and more there seems to be a building trend with Malware writers are developing ways to find both Mac systems and PC Systems. In a diary talking about that one mans journey leads to a site that can detect which system you are on and offer up Malware for that system. He also has some other examples of this on a Mac Trojan in the wild.

Now more and more[intlink id=”2173″ type=”post”] Apple users think they are not vulnerable[/intlink] to the types of antics that the PC users have to deal with day by day.  This however proves they are “WRONG”.   I will keep telling people whether PC or Mac that you need to have [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewalls[/intlink] installed to help protect yourself from be victim to this type of stuff.  Just a last week Sopho’s issued the OSX/Tored-Fam worm to their databases.   Sopho’s even talks about this in detail on their blog.

[ad]Though admittedly it is the people who are searching for Porn that will most likely install this malware.  It however begs the question, hasn’t this been done on the PC systems before?  I have to think this is because the Apple is getting a bigger share of the systems in the world.   For the one reason people still think they will never get Viruses or Worms on there system.   I on the other hand know that this is just the beginning and in the near future Apple will have to recommend to people to have Anti-virus software on your system.  They did that in the past but changed their minds.

Apple’s stance on malware and their systems are one that will be their downfall.   I’ve talked in the past about [intlink id=”694″ type=”post”]Mac\’s getting viruses and other such Malware[/intlink].  Although to Apple’s benefit they do offer ProtectMac AntiVirus for the OSX.   I don’t know how good this is but I do think they need to change their advertising and not make it seem like the Macintosh has can’t get viruses.   I think it would be really funny to see Justin Long in the Mac ads get a Virus, although I don’t think that will happen it is something that I would love to see.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie Spreads Malware

It seems in anticipation of the release of Half Blood Prince the Malware authors are starting to send for the movie. For example:

harrypotterblogspotfake
As you can see they really try to fool you into think your are going to be able to watch it for free.    They even put it the movie poster to try to get you to click that link. It is on a blogspot page and has a few Google followers, which I am amazed at because what I have found it.   If you were to click that play link (usa-top-news.info) it will redirect your to (world-news-scandals.com) and then to the final destination (tubes-portal.com). Each site is surprisingly in the US and tries to look like it is a real site. It sends you a file called streamviewer.40018.exe, which I am surprised AVG hasn’t picked this up so I went to see if this was a virus and Virustotal showed me this:harrypotterblogspotfake1

[ad]Very few actually detect this trojan downloader even [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]AVG[/intlink] hasn’t detected this as being malware.   So you best bet is not try to go watch it early because 9 times out of 10 it will be a virus.  You also should know that there are even some links in Digg.com and other popular websites that are promoting this. The top rated sites are what I call Google Juice to put the blog spot website onto the first page of Google. So you should install a good [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus software and Firewall[/intlink]. I also believe this will be coming out on DVD in December according to my sources this movie has been ready for quite some time and they are anxious to have it ready for Christmas so you won’t have to wait long to see it. Afterall they have had this movie ready since last Year.

This seems to be like the [intlink id=”3448″ type=”post”]Fake Codecs[/intlink], I have talked about.   In order to see this you have to install this software to view this movie.   I don’t even know if it is a true movie but I do expect in the coming weeks to days there will be even more Fake Sites like this trying to promote watching it for Free.  Thank goodness [intlink id=”3385″ type=”post”]we don”t have to worry about Zango anymore[/intlink]. Nothing in life comes free, so be on your guard.  Only you can prevent virus infections on your system.