Tag: date

The Dark side of Dating sites!

Paul


Come to The Dark Side, We have cookies Shirt — Cafepress (Click image to check it out!)

You Don’t know the Power of the Dark Side on Dating sites!

When your looking for that special someone you probably have been on several different sites.  It however is nothing compared to some of the things I’ve seen.   I’d get emails with the heading:

 

  • Someone sent you a Flirt
  • Someone’s Trying to Get in Touch With You!
  • A Zoosk member would like to chat with you on Zoosk
  • A Zoosk member sent you a flirt on Zoosk!
  • Someone wants to meet you!

These are a few of the emails I would get from time on these sites.   Some times it is a legit email and other times.   You have to wonder who comes up with the email.   Most of the time you get emails from people with phone numbers and email addresses they usually use “/” to avoid the filters on the said dating sites.   Now here are a few observations from not being scammed on dating sites!

Ways to tell you it’s a fake profile!

It doesn’t make much since but these people who send you some stuff makes me worry.   For example here are my tips to know if this is a spam and probably just a scam email in the same process.

  • Gives out the Email address the first email!
  • Gives out the text number to text them on the first email!
  • They claim to be living in another country in the first or few emails in!
  • The person profile isn’t complete!
  • The picture on the profile is super hot!

These are just a few observations that tell me a profile is either fake, but it isn’t the only indication.   Usually if I am curious I will still use one of my many email address specifically designed for the spam catching emails addresses.  Just to see if this is a real person or not.   You can usually tell by checking out the email headers.  If you ever want to know for sure this is the best possible way to tell if this email is coming from Germany, Africa, or Some other country besides the one you are on.   It just takes a little patients!  Hope this helps you out!

Paul Sylvester

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You won’t make money from W32:Sality.ao

Paul

People should be cautious of the making money because there is a variant out there trying to leverage the users into thinking they can make money.

McAfee Says “W32/Sality.ao is a parasitic virus that infects Win32 PE executable files. It infects files (*.exe and *.scr files) on the local, network and removable drives by overwriting code in the entry point of the original file and saving the overwritten code in its virus body. It then appends the virus body to the host file.”

Aliases for this Virus is:

  • Virus.Win32.Sality.y (Ikarus)

  • W32/Sality.AE (Norman)

  • W32/Sality.AH (Panda)

  • W32/Sality.AK (F-Prot)

  • Win32.KUKU.a (Rising)

  • Win32/Sality.AA (VET)

These links should help people understand it it.   You can visit my Malware Resources to help remove this virus.  Something to consider before removing this is to disable your restore points.

Remember there’s no easy to make money, the only real way is to work hard.  According to my research the Anti-virus companies have ways to remove this virus and as long as you update your database.

Zero Day For IE7 Being used in the wild.

Paul

It looks like IE7 patches are being used right now in the wild.  According to TrendMicro:

HTML_DLOADER.AS exploits the CVE-2009-0075 vulnerability, which is already addressed by the MS09-002 security patch released last week. On an unpatched system though, successful exploitation by HTML_DLOADER.AS downloads a backdoor detected as BKDR_AGENT.XZMS.

How the IE7 Exploits are being used

[Image from TrendMicro Blog]

[ad#ad2-right]As you can see this this can be very bad for the companies who wait a while.  Internet Explorer is still being used 1 out of 4 users and I see it it all the time on my stats.   The Good news is this isn’t as hard to get rid as the Conflicker but should be taken serious because the writers might start to want to get even more malicious and make it even harder.

This is the next step to prevent yourself from getting caught with your pants down so to speak, you need to patch all systems that have internet access.  I still like the Autopatcher because it will do the job with very little input from the user.   It also makes it easier for people to patch big systems.  You should also consider installing some Free Anti-virus software to help protect the systems you do have.

From the looks of this virus, someone could easily make this into a botnet and you know how that can could affect your systems and your ISP.  So it is best to get this months patches on the floor of your company as soon as possible.

You should also consider telling your users to start using Firefox to prevent infection from even happening. Until you patch, you are vulnerable.

Removing Win32/Bagle.HE worm

Paul15 Replies

Here is another virus that seems to be spreading lately.   From the looks of it, it sees to be another email worm.  Here is what eset says:

Aliases

Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gt (Kaspersky), W32/Bagle.gen (McAfee), Trojan.Tooso!gen (Symantec)

[ad#ad2-right]Win32/Bagle.HE is a worm that spreads via e-mail. The size of its executable is 40565 B .

When executed the worm copies itself in the following locations:

  • Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\hidn\
    hldrrr.exe

  • Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\hidn\
    hidn2.exe

In order to be executed on every system start, the worm sets the following Registry entry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\drv_st_key

[ad#ad2-left]It seems to have a manual removal process, Unless you pay for the other software but according to the 411 on PC Security:

Win32/Bagle.HE worm is a “threat” that appears in security scans by fake antispyware WinDefender 2008.

The danger of Win32/Bagle.HE worm is supposed to scare you into wasting $49.95 on WinDefender 2008.

Unless you like getting ripped off, don’t download the software the Win32/Bagle.HE worm popup links to. You’re not really infected with Win32/Bagle.HE worm — you’re infected with scamware that you need to remove.

I’ll show you how to get rid of Win32/Bagle.HE worm and WinDefender 2008, for free.

[via 411 on PC Security]

According to this site you can remove it by doing some steps.  I think Kaspersky has an easier way to remove it and it looks like most anti-virus software will remove this.   You need to remember that only you can prevent this from the future.   You should also update your windows update and make sure your system is up to date.

Uncovering a Virus/Trojan

Paul

Getting done with the first part really got my juices flowing. I was shopping looking and thinking about this next article. I came up to only one option turning this into a 3-5 length post due to all the content that I will have.  So where did we leave off?  Oh that is right figuring out if you have a virus/Trojan.  The instant I made a post about this 12 hours later someone make a comment and here is what he said:
[ad#ad2-right]

Rene Van Belzen

I can’t wait to read part two of this article. I always wondered how you’d know you’re infected if a virus don’t want to be detected and no virus definitions are yet available, because the virus is so new.

Now the truth is anytime a Virus does something it usually leaves a footprint somewhere and somehow.   Even the hardest working hacker can’t plan for all possibilities and that is where we begin.   I have been helping people for a while with viruses and know that no matter how hard the virus tries to hide you can usually find it relatively quickly and easily do to virus check here are the ways I’ve done to figure out if they may or may not have a virus/Trojan.

Now if this is a client’s computer and you don’t want to be rude to the client, there are a few indications of user error and installing a virus.   This is relatively simple, all you do is do a quick inventory of all the start menu programs.  You’d want to look for any P2P file sharing program, If they have Firefox Installed, and if they are using Window Mail and not Thunderbird.   You see 80% to 90% of virus downloaded are installed by the End USER.  They either downloading a game and installing a virus with [ad#ad2-left]a game, or not protecting themselves by using Internet Explorer or Using Windows Mail.  That is usually my first step due to the fact, I’ve got to be diplomatic about finding out about security ways.  Also make sure they are up to date on there Window updates, unless they are using a really old system then you will have to work even harder.  Also you can suspect a virus if the client is talking about having problem with a program recently although this isn’t always true it sometimes is the case due to the fact hackers don’t have a big chance to test these viruses/Trojans out before they set them into the wild.  So there are always going to be unplanned problems associated with them.

After the first initial search of desktop, you should really know the likely hood of a possible virus getting on the system and later we will talk about counter measures to prevent virus attacks in the future.   There are a few places a hacker likes to put commands.   Hackers love to put in the Registry to run a program every time Windows starts.  It usually in:

  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices\

Usually 50% to 70% of virus like to make sure the program to runs.  This is a flaw in Windows because hackers can edit this without much effort but there isn’t many places a hacker can go to make sure a program is set to run when you boot.   So this is also a benifit to finding those little programs.

Now just like the Regisitry, Hackers also like to put programs in a few areas on the hard drive.   This is also kinda hard to hide because most of the time these are consider important to the system but if you know what to look for you can pretty much figure out if it is truelly a system file.  These areas of the hard drive are:

  • C:\WINDOWS\System32[ad#ad2-right]

  • C:\WINDOWS

  • %programfiles%\common files\microsoft shared

  • %windir%\temp\

These are just a few but if you look hard enough it can be found most of the time.   Most of the time I use the registry to tell me where these programs are so I can do a further check of the program.  Some of this is not needed with some of the programs that I recommend but this is for those who want to be a through job and make sure the virus is gone.

On my next post we will talk about some good tools for the trade to help get rid of a virus/Trojan.  This little step here is used to  better help identify a virus and also give you chance to google each name on the list of registry and the hard drive  to see if you can identify the virus.