Police Virus

[spacial]

Sorry, know we have a computer section but few read that.

Last night, while searching Wikipedia, got the Police Virus.

Very professional looking it was too. Had my IP address, Net provider, even my home town. The graphic was even of my local Police Force

REMOVAL

You sadly need a diffrent computer. Or, you could do this now, and keep handy to be on the safe side. Especially if these things have managed to invade Wikipedia.

1) Turn off your computer.

2) Download an OFFLINE VIRUS SCAN.

3) Burn it to a CD.

4) Put this into your computer's drive and restart the computer. You may need to set it to BOOT from the CD DVD Drive. It should be done this way anyway, but some are not.

5). Let the scanner run.

Be careful downloading your scanner. I did a Google Search for mine. There were loads, but few I'd trust. Many of these are just scams themselves.

I used Microsoft Defender to be on the safe side. During download, it tried to slip in tool bars, several times. Careful, M$ have actually sunk that low!

Don't follow any claims of manual removal. The file name and location changes and in any case, it installs itself. It needs proper removal.

Really hope this doesn't happen to you and remember, if you pay, you may as well give these scum the keys to your home!




Addition. The Windows ofline scanner is here. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

[Snowpaw]

This is why I have adblock, plus noscript. So sorry to hear you got something nasty like that :/ Had to wipe this computer to get rid of a nasty google re routing rootkit when I first got it.

[Flan]

It's just another variant of ransomware using the scare of persecution for "illegal porn" to try to get victims to pay up money to the con artists.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/11/mushrooming-growth-of-ransomware-extorts-5-million-a-year/

[spacial]

Understand. My probably was, it happened late at night. I was just doing some last minute reading.

Bang.

And I didn't know what to do about it.

Fortunately, I had my wife's computer. But it occured to me that many of my dearest friend here might not. For many of us, our computer is a life line to the outside world and especially to Susans'.

If we download an offline virus scanner now and burn it to a disc, then we can at least be a bit more prepared.

It will need to be updated now and again, but the cost of a single disc, every couple of months is not too bad.

[Snowpaw]

It's just another variant of ransomware using the scare of persecution for "illegal porn" to try to get victims to pay up money to the con artists.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/11/mushrooming-growth-of-ransomware-extorts-5-million-a-year/

Given that what constitutes illegal porn is common knowledge, that number is actually frightening. Very very frightening.

[Beverly]

If you run any version of Windows (but particularly XP) then create a separate USER that has no administrative privileges and use that for surfing the web. Also use browsers like Firefox that have script blockers. This way if you get infected it is much harder for the virus to self-download and install because it lacks the admin privilege to run the installer.

For myself, I run Linux rather than Windows and the approach outlined above (with limited user capabilities) is standard for Linux user accounts.

[spacial]

bev.

That is really good advice and interesting.

I use XP. I also use Firefox. But I haven't set up a different account. I will now.

I did try Linux a few years ago, with my last computer. I got the disc from thelinuxshop.co.uk, a version of PCLinuxOS 0.93

It worked fine from the CD itself. Rather slow, but that's to be expected.

But when I installed it onto my HD is became unstable, needing to be restarted, loosing net connection and being generally slow.

I uninstalled it and it left my CD/DVD drive unusable. In other words, I couldn't load anything back again.

Using other machines, I accessed numerous sites which are suppose to advise on Linux, but they either deleted my posts or moved them to inappropriate sub-forums. I just needed to get back online.

That's when I bought my current machine.

I know a number of people who swear by Linux. I'm naturally pleased. But I can't risk that again.

[Sylvester]

Just to note, PeerBlock is the best thing that's ever happened to my computer. Looking at it right now, it is blocking 1,040, 007, 128 IPS from accessing knowledge of my computer. And currently, some source called Quantcast Corporation. It's crazy how many things are blocked. I've even noticed universities and schools on the blocked list, some which aren't even on this coast.

[spacial]

This is as good a time as any for an update.

I contacted Wikipedia to tell them they had a link hosting a virus. I gave them the Wikipedia address and the location of the link.

They wrote back, claiming that the malware was on my system already and the link merely activated it! They then advised me that there are many tools available and I should use them! ( I already do of course).

So, I wrote back, pointing out that I am more than capable of dealing with the probelm as I had already outlined, but that since Wikipedia was hosting this link it was thier users who may not have this experience who are at risk.

The guy from Wikipedia wrote again claiming:

I happen to have been a computer science major, and it is possible for malware to inject code into pages on the user's computer that was not there when the server transmitted the data.

So there we have it. Wikipedia is knowingly hosting one of the more nasty virus' around that the moment. They don't seem to care because one of them happens to be a computer science major!

Presumably the same qualification the writer of this virus has!

And a quick check, the infected link is still there.