Possible help for ransomware

Folks, this article discusses ransomware, and provides links to a ‘toolkit’ that may help you if you have been hit with an infection, and your files are now ‘locked’ by encryption. I have not tried any of this myself, and cannot comment one way or the other, except to say my advice is to seek professional help; but if you want to try D-I-Y decryption, well, then, here you go. Use at your own risk.

Article: Ransomware: To pay or not to pay

“There is no need to tell victims of digital extortion how successful it is. What is needed is a way to help victims respond to the ransom demands.” Read more..

And here is the toolkit’s Information page. It is vital that you thoroughly read it before using the toolkit. Ransomware Response Kit Overview.
Once you’ve read and understood the page, click the “Downloads” in the navigation pane. Be sure to read the “Readme” file before trying any tool.

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Today’s quote: “You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.” ~ Joyce Meyer

Copyright 2007-2015 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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I Answer A Common Question

Is antivirus “X” better than antivirus “Y”?

Both in my “real job” as a Support & Repair Tech, and as a World Renown Tech Blogger (Ahem), I am frequently asked about various programs folks can use to prevent computer infections, or clean up an infection up after “my teenage son/grandson downloaded something.” ¹

If I had a nickel for each of the times I have been asked “is antivirus “X” better than antivirus “Y”? ” and/or “which anti-spyware do you use, Paul?” it would have added up to a pretty nice pile of nickels.
Like.. maybe.. oh.. twenty gazillion dollars worth.

Yes. I get asked a lot. But I don’t mind and I don’t charge a nickel. Because there’s an organized, criminal enterprise bent on using the Internet to turn our PC’s into spam “bots” in a “botnet”, steal our personal information (“identities”), and are always hoping to hit the jackpot by recording a bank login and/or credit card number.

[Fact: Online crime is bigger than the global drugs trade. The Internet shadow economy is worth over $105 billion/year.  No country, no person, no business and no government is immune from Cybercrime.]

I hate repeating myself, so I refer the askers to Top 10 things you should do to your computer and Basic Steps For Protecting Your PC. But they come back with, “yeah, yeah, yeah, but I want your private and personal recommendations.”

So.. always give the same baseline answer — if you connect a Windows computer to the Internet you should have:
1) a firewall turned on (just one).
2) an up-to-date antivirus (just one).
3) One up-to-date anti-spyware with “active shielding” (heuristics)
4) One “passive”, up-to-date, anti-spyware that you run once a week to catch what the other one misses.
5) A healthy stock of “paranoid common sense”. (No. You did not just win the Irish E-mail Lottery.)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I want your private and personal recommendations.

Well, folks, Okay. I will tell you about a tool I use that I haven’t mentioned here before. It is an anti-malware scanner that I use on the job, and on several of my own machines. And I install it on the PC’s of my friends and family. And, I’ll tell you why — it’s simple and it’s effective.

Typically, I install the free version to use as a “passive” scanner. On the job, I use it as one of my “go to” detect-and-remove tools. And to my clients and friends, and since prevention is better, I reco’ that they purchase the Professional version so they can have the real-time (“active”) protection and auto-scheduling — set it and forget it. (Another reason I do this is because this tool “plays very nicely with others”.)
This has been true for years.

The program I’m about to name will be (um.. should be) familiar to my geekier readers, but many folks have never heard of it — it’s called SUPERAntiSpyware (aka “SAS”). I  am not going to run through it’s details here (this post is already lengthy) but instead refer you to this Bill Mullins article, SUPERAntiSpyware Professional – The Name Says It All!

I also want to say that I admire the people behind SAS, and they get a big tip of my geek hat. They are hard working and generous and they know their stuff. Their motto is “Remove ALL the Spyware, NOT just the easy ones” and I like that attitude!

Tip of the day: The good folks there at SAS have generously donated five Professional licenses to me, “lifetime” licenses no less, to award to my readers. I sincerely thank them for that. So I am going to do a random drawing from folks who “enter” by posting a comment (below). The drawing will be held early next week, so act now.
Simply click on “comment”, and enter a name and valid e-mail in the form. Actually commenting is optional. And, I shouldn’t have to say this, but multiple entries will result in disqualification.

Today’s free download: Why not get a jump on the game and download a trial version of SUPERAntiSpyware Professional today.. you just might get an “activation” as a winner. And if not, you can either purchase (if you do, I advise getting the lifetime upgrade) or it will revert to the free version. Check it out here.

¹ I use quotes, because, well, that sounds a bit like “the dog ate my homework” to a tech.

[update: The contest ends today (Sept. 10th) at 12 noon, Pacific. Winners will be posted at 5pm.]

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Malware Removal Techniques

What do you do when your PC is displaying all the signs of having been infected and/or hacked but your antivirus and anti-spyware scan reports come back clean?

This was the case for a fella who called me for advice recently. He had done things ‘right’ — and by that I mean he has a firewall, he keeps his antivirus definitions up to date, and he runs a couple of anti-spyware applications — but suspected his machine had been hacked anyway.

He couldn’t do things he was used to doing (like deleting a file) and his machine was “really slow.”
But according to his scanners, his machine is in perfect shape.

Tip of the day: If you should find yourself in a similar situation there are several steps you can take to help resolve your questions and (hopefully) fix your machine without taking the drastic step of wiping your hard drive, formatting, and reinstalling Windows.

The first step is to use a scanner that isn’t installed on your machine. Here’s two ways to do that: one, if your antivirus allows it (and most of them do these days), follow its instructions and make an antivirus recovery disk. This is a bootable disk that scans your system before Windows loads.

To use one, put it in your CD tray and restart your machine. A plain-text sentence will appear telling you to “press any key to boot from CD…” When you see it, hit your spacebar or, well, any other key, and then follow the instructions. When it’s finished, remove the CD and restart your machine again.
[note: you may also use a properly prepared USB thumb drive. Click here to read my article on how to do that.]

A second method is to use an online scanner. I have a list, with links, of several good online scans on my website, here. Quite a few of the online scanning tools will try to sell you their full application, but you’re under no obligation to buy. The big advantage to these two methods lies in the fact that they have not been compromised, or altered, and the files and scanners on your machine may be– the modification being done by the virus or hacker.

Another thing to do is scroll down to my “Today’s free link” and download HiJack This! Run it and dump the result into a .txt file (there’s instructions for this) and then register on one of the HiJack This! forums (there’s instructions for this too) and post your results there. Before too long, an expert anti-malwareologist [don’t bother looking: I just now made that word up] will have looked over the intricacies, and will post his analysis and instructions. These guys (and gals) are really, really good at what they do, and you can trust their answers.

Also run CheckDisk with the “r” “f” switches (this probably will require a reboot) to make sure the problem is not your hard drive.
Click on Start >Programs >Accessories >Command prompt. In the white-on-black window type “chkdsk /r /f” (no quotes, and be sure to include the spaces). You may be told that certain files are in use, and asked if you want to “schedule this at the next reboot Y/N?” Type in a “y” and restart your machine.

Hopefully these efforts will be rewarded with a rejuvination of your machine, and you will be back in business again.  If not, you have my sympathy. You may have a rootkit and then your best solution is to re-format your hard drive and reinstall everything, or enlist the aid of a professional

Today’s free link: HijackThis™ is a free utility which quickly scans your Windows computer to find settings that may have been changed by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs. HijackThis does not clean infections, but creates a report, or log file, with the results of the scan. A large community of users participates in online forums, where experts help interpret the scan results to clean up infected computers.

Copyright © 2007-8 Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Positive meaning to word “geek”+spyware

I want to apologize to you in advance for a word I will use in this blog from time to time, and that word is “geek.”

When I was a boy–many years ago now–“geek” was a completely pejorative and insulting word. A “geek” was typically a socially inept, small, quiet, know-it-all (who usually wore glasses) kid who couldn’t connect his bat with the softest-thrown baseball or catch a football to save his life…and he used big words all the time. Perhaps in your day you referred to ‘him’ as a Pointdexter, nerd, dork, or wimp. Back then there was no doubt or question about it–“geek” was a put-down: a derogatory statement. Period.

Today, I proudly declare: I am a geek. When I do, I am not broadcasting my pride in my inability to catch a football. (I can catch; and, even throw a tight spiral.) I am saying that I’m “into” computers and electronic gadgets, and I know a little about how they work.

At some point and time our common usage of the word “geek” has changed. It is no longer used strictly as a ‘slam’ and a put-down (however, if that is your intent, I believe the other words I listed above are still 100% negative…although Bill Gates may have softened the word “nerd” some…). If, in the course of reading this blog, you see me use the word “geek”–please rest assured that I am always using it with the nicest of meanings. I even use “geek” as a compliment. Really.

Tip of the day: lotu mentioned in a comment to yesterday’s post on defragmention that spyware, if it gets onto and runs on your machine, will cause it to (amongst other unpleasant things!) suffer performance degredation and make it run slower. I intend to spend a fair amount of time discussing malware, and spyware in particular, and how you can combat and remove it. I will return to this topic in the future. But for today I just want to make this point: If you connect to the Web, you need to run anti-spyware programs. Notice I that I wrote programs. Plural.

That fact is, no one anti-spyware application is 100% effective at stopping and removing spyware. There are many anti-spyware programs available and some are more effective than others. Some are great at stopping keyloggers but fall down when it comes to Trojan Horses, and others are visa-versa…as an example. So I strongly recommend running two anti-spywares, in the hopes that one will catch what the other missed. (There are many free anti-spyware applications [and some are adware disquised as anti-spyware] available. For my more detailed descriptions and fuller listing, click here.) I cannot stress to you strongly enough to install and run some kind of anti-spyware program…and preferably, two. In that vein, today I will provide not one, but two, Today’s free links.

Today’s free link #1: AdAware SE Personal from Lavasoft. “Ad-Aware 2007 Free remains the most popular anti-spyware product for computer users around the world, with nearly one million downloads every week. Our free anti-spyware version provides you with advanced protection against spyware…”

Today’s free link #2: SpyCatcher Express from Tenebril. “Allows novice PC users to remove aggressive spyware . Stops next-generation, mutating spyware. Blocks reinstallation of aggressive spyware. Removes spyware safely and automatically.”

Copyright © 2007 Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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