Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Malware: Even IT folks get it sometimes….

Yes, I can admit it, even IT folks can unknowingly get come across a malware attack on their machines. IT happened on my laptop today at work.  The difference is that most IT folks know what to do to limit the impact and get rid of the rouge infection.

While researching some excel formulas that I am never really good at, I all of a sudden I got this is fake antivirus “program” on my taskbar. I knew right away that this was cause by a compromised website. Defender.exe or known as a Trojan Mal/FakeAV-FB is just the beginning of an attach. Once installed the compromised computer can then become a gateway for other Malware/Spyware etc….

Immediately, I pulled my network LAN cable and disabled my wireless. I knew that this malware was only the gateway to try to install other malware/spyware. I then, restarted in safe mode. From there, I was able to run my malwarebytes (buy it and support a great product) and remove the threat. I also looked up on Sophos site to determine what other cleaning that I needed to do. After a little registry hacking and deleting Windows Restore points, I was good to go.

The quick action lead me to only have to remove the Trojan and not any other items that the Trojan would soon let in.

Not the best way to spend my lunch hour, but at least I am clean……