Spring RTS Engine

i heard computersyphillis makes you a master of repairs, if it happens often enough?

well, that is where the analogy falls apart with computers you just reformat.

But viruses are not just happy little adventurers who show up in your pc and wreak havoc they also take stuff to other people, like passwords via logging malware. Once this information is acquired theft and damages of monetary nature may be inflicted upon the user of the computer which is not undone with a format. Of course to believe in any absolute security is stupid but to have none...

I'm against virus scanners especially nortons since they have been resource hogs in the past... Avira is alright, if I notice performance hits I just turn it off. It's not like the year is 1999 and we are on Windows 2000 which gets infected on a clean install right after connecting it to the internet anymore.

You dont need a million AV programs, just use your head before you open email attachments, don't use programs for the internet that use IE windows (like Outlook) and double check your firefox addons in case of firefox. So much bloatware out there.

A majority of all windows related "viruses" rely on just how much a dumbass the user is IMO :P

I cannot speak to users being dumbasses and getting virii but when I used to spend time in darker places i ran across a good few sites trying to attack my shit. Nowadays I don't get many issues past hardware failures from a powersurge or similar mess

I don't know much about security, and I base most of what I know by talking to a friend who's a security researcher and on what I can read on slashdot, so I don't want to go much deeper in the discussion than this.

But from what I understand, anti-viruses are rarely going to be able to protect you from a 0-day exploit, and the best way to protect yourself is to patch your software frequently or not use software with a bad security reputation (f.e avoid adobe when you can, it's like the pdf and flash team are competing on who can create more security bugs).

Personally, I just avoid shady sites, I don't use a whole lot of suspicious software (most of the freeware/shareware/ad-ware stuff), as well as any warez and similar. Currently I don't use any of the antiviruses because they would slow my PC down more than I could possibly benefit from them.

I did use it when I was a lot younger, as no one in this country had a legal Windows copy so patching was impossible and viruses were rampant, but as all of my software is legal for many years now I can just update everything instead of having to worry about viruses infecting vulnerable software.

There are some cases where I still use "firewalls" (this even applies to linux). I had a password protected apache server with a password-less part for stuff I could use to share files with friends and myself remotely (I used it before dropbox became popular). However for some reason a (probably virus infected) PC was DOS-ing me, trying to access some invalid URLs on the server, causing my PC to send 404s and thus drain my bandwidth (upload is a bitch) - I had to block the guy with iptables and eventually set some sort of automatic ssh & http blocking mechanism.

Still the first thing I do when I install Windows or get a new router is to disable firewall, set up "DMZ" (on the router), and turn off all security hints in windows. That stuff just gets in my way.

for many years i did hold it the same way.. even on xp and it was fast, and the few malware agents i got were found by spybot and extincted by spybot.

You got that right that AntiVirus Software doesent protect against many zero-days, and (even more horrible) against many even longer known exploits, as long as the software-user group suffering from that exploit is not large or financially potent enough.

Another thing that always was teeming with viruses and is actually quite often ignored, is pirated software and movies. There is nearly no keygenerator which is not uploaded with some maleware. Unofficial reason everybody knows but keeps quiet about anyway. The industry wants it that way. Nobody is going to report his corrupted torrents.

For those who care:

http://secunia.com/gfx/pdf/Secunia_Half ... t_2010.pdf

gajop wrote:Personally, I just avoid shady sites, I don't use a whole lot of suspicious software (most of the freeware/shareware/ad-ware stuff), as well as any warez and similar. Currently I don't use any of the antiviruses because they would slow my PC down more than I could possibly benefit from them.

Yeah, I still go to shady places. Also, your pc is that slow? or is mine that nuts?

gajop wrote:I did use it when I was a lot younger, as no one in this country had a legal Windows copy so patching was impossible and viruses were rampant, but as all of my software is legal for many years now I can just update everything instead of having to worry about viruses infecting vulnerable software.

There are some cases where I still use "firewalls" (this even applies to linux). I had a password protected apache server with a password-less part for stuff I could use to share files with friends and myself remotely (I used it before dropbox became popular). However for some reason a (probably virus infected) PC was DOS-ing me, trying to access some invalid URLs on the server, causing my PC to send 404s and thus drain my bandwidth (upload is a bitch) - I had to block the guy with iptables and eventually set some sort of automatic ssh & http blocking mechanism.

Still the first thing I do when I install Windows or get a new router is to disable firewall, set up "DMZ" (on the router), and turn off all security hints in windows. That stuff just gets in my way.

Where are you from? this is a terribly fascinatingly different world than the one of my early tech years.

UAC is on ; its when the screen darkens and "do you want X to make changes to computer".

The infection came from supremacy1914.com almost certainly through the site's java based game applet and i was using firefox. The damage is not sever. Only noticeable now in redirects for all google links through a single non-?resolved? ip. I suspect keylogers though.

Doesn't windows protect itself though? How can any program be able to damage WD? Would running ClamWin or AVG off a flash unbutu boot work?

Does it count as selfdefense if you shoot a infected site down?

dimm wrote:UAC is on ; its when the screen darkens and "do you want X to make changes to computer".

The infection came from supremacy1914.com almost certainly through the site's java based game applet and i was using firefox. The damage is not sever. Only noticeable now in redirects for all google links through a single non-?resolved? ip. I suspect keylogers though.

Doesn't windows protect itself though? How can any program be able to damage WD? Would running ClamWin or AVG off a flash unbutu boot work?

Check your hosts file, the virus might have altered it. Also, check your dns settings.

spybot found nothing and immunization helped with the redirect only a little bit and not on FF. Chrome tells me google.com has very bad security meaning the redirect actually happens at "google.com"

I did almost everything here:http://www.brighthub.com/internet/secur ... 73919.aspx

check your hosts file %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and search the registry for the the domain name, i.e. babylon.com

deleted 4 keys and still nothing
IEX works perfectly well
Spybot immunized against www.10sek.com in the host file and none of the browsers connected to anything.

Dude, go download #winhosts (renders spybots immunization useless as spybot is perpetually out of date) and install it, and run it.

If you still have issues after that. Download an offline installer of your favorite browser, and then delete every trace of your currently installed browsers. Then reinstall your favorite.

If it isn't hosts and you don't have a virus, then your browser is likely damaged. If the above doesn't work, then you still have malware on your machine.

What to do if the above doesn't work: go download agora system rescue ISO and burn it to a disc, then boot to it and run a scan. That should fix you up.

GO DOWNLOAD AND RUN #WINHOSTS! It will definitively rule out any hosts issues.

Avira system rescue ISO*, not agora. Fucking autocorrect.

Aviria free antivirus blue screened on instal, killed 2 of the browser's ability to connect to anything, would not work cause license outdated or something, and took a while to find the uninstaller. The 12 spam toolbars it offered to instal should have been a giveaway. At least with spybot's immunization the pws it reset were easy to fix.

I did half of the browser suggestion for ffx and chrome with an uninstall for chrome and a new profile for ffx with no results.

You need to pay more attention. It's irritating when someone you are trying to help doesn't do what you tell them to do.

Some of us know what to do as we deal with this crap professionally for a living.

Now, please read carefully. It get cranky when I have to repeat myself.

When troubleshooting issues like this, it is necessary to find the problem at its source.

As a general rule it will either be an issue with HOSTS, malware, or the browser. There are other ways, but they are less common and unlikely.

First step, http://www.it-magique.com/winhosts/ download it. Install it. Run it.

See if problem still persists.

If it does, go Google "avira system rescue disc ISO". Among the top results will be a live cd that contains a Linux district from which you can run Avira outside of windows. This is important because windows locks files in memory hardcore. It causes AV to be less effective ( sort of, its kinda a bigger thing than that but I'm shooting for less technical explanations here ).

So, being able to run AV outside of windows is a big win.

After doing these steps, if the problem is still not solved, then delete every possible trace of all your browsers (except ie of course). This includes files in appdata (chrome stores a ton of Shit in appdata ) . Then go redownload and install again. In fact to rule out browser issues, go grab portable chrome from portable apps, and give it a spin before reinstalling browsers.

Do these steps. Do them now. Please don't make me stab you.

OMG winhosts worked!!! it worked!!!! Thx vrymuch. And now no ads are viewable ever....


Now what does this mean:
You attempted to reach http://www.google.com, but the server presented a certificate signed using a weak signature algorithm. -chrome
no such problem happens in PortableChrome

I told you.

I wrote that program specifically for people like you who don't want or need to know anything about HOSTS but still want the benefits from a HOSTS file that will block parasites and ad servers.

It also has the benefit of immediately nullifying a lot of malware.

Quick note: Do not use spybot s&d immunization. Just run winhosts whenever you want to update the lists (might wanna do it once a month or summat). s&d immunization is usually woefully out of date and incomplete, moreover, anything s&d immunization has that is relevant is already in #winhosts.

It actually inserts itself to be run at each startup, but it requires admin permissions so windows 7 ignores it. You can however use windows task scheduler to make it run every x amount of time.

dimm wrote: Now what does this mean:
You attempted to reach http://www.google.com, but the server presented a certificate signed using a weak signature algorithm. -chrome
no such problem happens in PortableChrome

Generally this is caused when your system clock is set incorrectly. Check the date and time in the bottom right clock. It might have gotten messed up. Why certificates use OS date/time is beyond me.

Glad we got it sorted :_) Winhosts uses the hosts file from winhelp2002, so it basically blocks adservers/known virus/malware/etc servers from making a connection to your computer (actually, if you wanna be picky about technicalities -_- , it prevents your computer from connecting to those servers, not the other way around).

Ah wait no. While google's and bing's results dont produce any more problems occasionally a popup will popup just like before. And by just like before i mean through an ip instead of dns and totally out of the blue. Also time is not wrong.