Hunting and Killing Malware

Malware is short for malicious software. It includes viruses, worms, rogues, adware and spyware. All malware has bad intentions, or mostly bad. A virus is a program that does damage to other files and keeps your computer from operating correctly. A worm is a different kind of malicious program in that it can have a delayed reaction, or even mask it's presence so you don't even know it's there while stealing information. Adware is advertising that you don't need or want. Spyware is a program that watches what you do and were you go and reports that to someone else. A rogue is a malicious program that looks like a legitimate program made by someone else - like an Anti-Virus program labeled to look like a Windows program, but it is not from Microsoft and is actually a virus itself. There's a few things you can do to protect yourself from malicious software.

1) Keep your operating system up to date. Automatic updates are a good way to do this. If you don't like automatic updates, just remember to check regularly and download the patches for your operating system. Windows is pretty quick to develop and release patches for security problems. Apple is slower but getting better. Linux does okay, but there is less need for security on Linux systems.

2) Be careful of the web sites you visit. There are lots of reputable ones, and there are quite a few bad ones. If you don't know for sure, don't go there. Watch the URL line (the address of the site or the site name) above or the toolbar below and see if it changes to another site (called a "redirect"). This is not guaranteed to be a sign of badness, but it frequently is, unless it's for a major trade name site. Spoofing is a term used to describe a fake website that looks like a real one, or a website that is set up only to steal personal information from you. We can't say it enough: be careful.

3) Don't open the attachments on emails unless you are absolutely certain they are clean. Even if it's from a friend, but something just doesn't seem right, email them separately to ask if it's for real. Delete anything suspicious, because your friend's email might've been hijacked. If you delete it, and it was from a friend, they can always re-send it. If you get something from your bank that is odd, email them separately to verify. Remember, if you didn't ask for it, even from a friend, be suspicious. Be very suspicious.

4) Never send personal information over an unscrambled connection (a scrambled connection is called encrypted). Encryption is when your data is scrambled, then sent somewhere, then decrypted or unscrambled so the other person is the only one who reads the data. A lot of info you send over the internet, such as regular emails, are not encrypted and can be 'snatched' and read by anyone. The site will tell you if they use encryption or not. You can also tell by looking at the URL. When you send personal financial information, the Universal Resource Locator should change from http://sitename to https://sitename (there is an s added to the URL that stands for secure).

Your bank or credit card company will not ask you to verify an account by sending personal information such as a Social Security number in the clear (by email without encryption). If you get such a request, it is called 'phishing' (a combination of the words 'phony' and 'fishing') so don't fall for the fake bait. You can easily verify the email by calling your bank.

Remember what mom and dad taught us - THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH. That means if something sounds too good to be true, it is. Listen to your Jiminy Cricket conscience chirping in the back of your head telling you not to click. Or not to fall for the Nigerian guy with all the money he needs you to help move for him.

5) Use Brave as your browser instead of Internet Explorer or the new replacement with Windows 10 they are calling Edge. Brave is designed better. Explorer has improved over the years, but we still have fewer problems with Brave. We also resent the fact that Microsoft bundles Explorer (and now Edge) with their operating system and takes away some control. Brave is free, easy to install, and has a lot of nifty add-ons to personalize it. It blocks advertising (Adblock Plus) and other helpful stuff. You can also use Chrome, Firefox, Safari (they have a version for Windows too) and some other lesser known browsers. Anything except the Microsoft products.

Yes, there are sometimes bugs with browsers. Nothing's perfect, especially in computer land. But anything is still better than Explorer and now Windows 10 Edge, and way more helpful.

6) Get good antivirus protection. ESET is the best and most reasonable software package in existence for blocking, ferreting out and removing malicious software. There has been some discussion over the years as to whether anti-virus software is really helpful or not. There are some A/V programs that do a decent job at anticipating an attack (like ESET) but they are not foolproof. However, they will protect you from generic attacks that float around out there all the time. There are a lot of those still, so a good A/V program can definitely help.

ESET anti-virus

There are a number of versions of ESET, but the two main products are called NOD32 and Smart Security. NOD32 is the basic anti-virus program and the one we use and recommend the most. Smart Security is good for additional jobs such as parental control. If you have an email client, like Outlook (a separate program for checking your email instead of just looking online at something like Gmail) or Thunderbird then get Smart Security. If not, get the NOD32. Give us a call to find out more about either program.

It runs in the background all the time and doesn't slow down your computer. Slicker than snot on a doorknob. Go ahead and purchase it, then if you don't like it (and so far the people we recommend it to like it) you can ask for a refund.

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Nullifying the Black Hats

It's just plain fun to hunt and kill a computer virus. We love to take the best efforts of the black hat morons out there trying to disrupt your work and turn them into nothing. It's a comment on their whole lives.

Tech Support has software that is top notch at finding malicious software (malware for short) and digging it out where we can kill it. We also have some hardware techniques for surrounding them and choking them to death.

For instance, if you don't have a second hard drive, you're just asking for trouble. When you get a virus or a worm, we'll install a new hard drive and use the old one as a back up. You can remove data at your own pace, then format the second drive when you've gotten everything off of it you need.

Do-it-yourself anti-virus tips

Okay, here's some do-it-yourself tips for hunting viruses. There are three programs you can try. One is free (meaning they would like a donation if you like it) and two have free trial periods. These are:

Spybot Search and Destroy

Malwarebytes

ESET

ESET is simply the best virus fighter out there. It takes the fewest system resources and nails pretty much all of the viruses out there. You can get a 30-day free trial by clicking on the link.

Only pick one anti-virus package, though. If you have two anti-virus programs installed on your computer they will fight each other. It's because they sort of behave like viruses themselves, so the changes one program makes are viewed with suspicion by the other program. These three happen to work together okay if you have the paid version of ESET and the free versions of Spybot and Malwarebytes. The reason is that Spybot and Malwarebytes free versions are not what are called "real time" anti-virus programs. They only run when you tell them to run. The two free ones will scan memory and hard drives, and sometimes find minor adware that ESET doesn't take as a threat. Really though, you only need ESET.

If you have a free version of another virus program, that's not good. You need to pay for a subscription if you want the best help. Most of the other anti-virus programs are either what we call "resource hogs" meaning they take up a lot of space and can slow down your computer, or they are not nearly as effective as ESET.

So anyway, you can download and run all three of these and pretty much clean your system. However, Spybot will sometimes ask you if you want to delete stuff you shouldn't delete. Be very hesitant to delete stuff connected with the Registry. Go ahead and try these, but be careful! Don't blame us if you think you can do it yourself then mess something up. Generally, technical knowledge isn't needed, but that's not always true.

If you like them, buy the paid versions. Freeware is only free because of the good graces of the people who develop it, and they need to eat too. If you get a benefit from the program don't be a piker and either send a small donation or buy the full versions.

One anti-virus program at a time

When choosing an anti-virus program, remember that you should only have one at a time running. AV programs tend to act like the viruses they block, so if you have two of them running at the same time each thinks that the other is a virus and fights. This can mean your registry is damaged, your operating system won't boot, programs won't run, and you can't find icons. In short, the effects of the fight can look like the damage caused by an actual virus.

If you have two or more AV programs running, shut all but one down. Better yet, uninstall them.

Macs and Viruses

Popular thought has it that Mac computers don't get viruses. Popular thought is wrong. For a long time there just weren't enough Apple products to warrant a look by the bad guys. That has changed. Right now the market has about 13% Mac computers, and this market is becoming a more attractive target for the black hats.

Macs are actually more vulnerable to attacks than PC's. This is because Apple is somewhat slow to release updates for known problems, there are not as many software tools for removal, and some vulnerabilities in the Mac operating systems (OS) can be exploited by hackers without you even knowing about it.

A prime example of Mac malware that installs without the user knowing of it was the Flashback virus. Most people didn't know they had it. Also called Flashfake, it was designed to install just by visiting a website that has the virus. You don't even have to okay an installation or anything like that. It uses a vulnerability in Java, which is a programming language used for viewing information on some web pages. Flashback was designed to collect sensitive private information such as passwords and relay it to the black hats who designed the virus.

To fight this and other viruses, you can update your operating system and there are some steps Tech Support can use to scrub the remnants from your system. Or if you know you have it and have some technical expertise yourself go to F-Secure or CNET for steps on removal.

Flashback was detected in the fall of 2011, but it took Apple until April 2012 to release a patch. Cisco updated Java at about the beginning of 2012, but Apple uses their own version of Java. On 4/12/12 Apple finally released their Java update. One is for OS X Lion and the other is for OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The updates will remove all common versions of Flashback. This information is old, but we put it here to illustrate the slowness of Apple in fixing problems with their software.

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Data Storage by the Numbers

Byte: a computer 'word' made up of eight 1's or zeros called bits.

Kilobyte: about one thousand bytes. Most documents are measured in the kilobyte range. A 300-page book or document in Microsoft Word format containing 116,945 words is about 830 kilobytes. Converting that to an Adobe pdf file gives a file size of 1,612 kb or 1.612 megabytes. Simple letters with a couple of graphics (like letterhead) are about 25 to 50 kilobytes. Abbreviated in file sizes as kb, i.e. 50kb.

Megabyte: about one million bytes, one thousand times the size of a kilobyte. Pictures are about 2 to 6 megabytes depending on your camera's settings. Most songs are around 3 to 4 megabytes of information in an mp3 format. Abbreviated in file sizes as mb, i.e. 4mb or 4 megabytes.

Gigabyte: about one billion bytes, 1,000 times the size of a megabyte. You can fit about 250 4mb pictures in a gigabyte.

Terabyte: About a million megabytes (a trillion bytes) and again, 1,000 times the size of a gigabyte. This equals about 250,000 pictures (assuming 4 megabytes average), 128 DVD movies (assuming 8 gigabytes each) or maybe 20 Blu Ray disks.