About an hour ago, one of my friends instant messaged me through AIM. He told me that he made a slideshow of him and me, and that I should visit a TinyURL website to download it. After I downloaded the specified file, I realized that I just voluntarily downloaded a virus. McAfee SecurityCenter is currently doing a complete system scan to find whatever I just downloaded, and my desktop background is currently flashing, saying "Warning! Spyware Detected on Your Computer!" Tonight really isn’t the best time for me to be writing, so I’ll let you know what happens tomorrow.
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Edit (April 24, 2009, 09:55 PM):
Yesterday, I briefly described that I downloaded a virus. Actually, there’s a little bit more to it. When my friend sent me that link, I downloaded an .exe file to my desktop and double clicked it. I noticed that files were being extracted to C:\Windows\Tempie, but I didn’t really think too much of it. I waited for the progress bar to reach 100%, with the only thought in my head being wonder of why it was taking so long. Soon afterwards, it started installing. Then, I woke up.
There was no way I could close it; it ran in the background, and the only reason I knew something was happening was because McAfee SecurityCenter went insane blocking trojan installations and unwanted registry changes. As I watched, not knowing what to do, the dust settled and McAfee went silent. It had lost the battle. The damage was done. I was looking at a flashing background telling me that I had a virus. I started staring blankly at my screen again.
I realized that I was intelligent enough to download, extract, and install a virus, all voluntarily and manually, thanks to a friend who got his AIM account hacked. Below is the original conversation:
Pooncube (9:04:50 PM): Check this out
Pooncube (9:04:54 PM): I made a slide show of youu and me
adamparkzer (9:04:57 PM): uh
adamparkzer (9:04:57 PM): ok
Pooncube (9:04:58 PM): Link removed
adamparkzer (9:05:28 PM): … Why is it telling me to download a file
I still had homework I had to finish, and I didn’t feel like wasting time trying to remove a virus, so I let McAfee SecurityCenter do all the scanning and deleting. After about an hour and a half, it found two infected files – two files I use to hack Flash games by force-transferring packets and run external flash scripts. After my frustration got pretty severe, I went ahead and started digging around. I found the virus and removed it manually in eight minutes with no reboots required.
Moral of the story: Don’t download files from links that your friends send you, especially if someone hacked them.
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Edit (April 30, 2009, 09:58 PM):
Last week, I downloaded, extracted, and installed a virus onto my own computer. I ran a virus scan which took an hour and a half, but McAfee found all the wrong files, and I ended up having to manually remove the virus, which took a mere eight minutes. If you’re unfamiliar with this occurrence, click here to read the full blog post.
Yesterday and today, the same guy IMed me with more TinyURL links, possibly thinking I would fall for it again. The conversation went as follows:
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Pooncube (6:07:34 PM): what’s up?
Pooncube (6:07:38 PM): I made this thing on myspace for U
Pooncube (6:07:42 PM): Link removed
adamparkzer (6:07:55 PM): Idiot
adamparkzer (6:07:59 PM): I’m not falling for that again
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Pooncube (4:10:20 PM): heyy
Pooncube (4:10:25 PM): this is our new picture cube LOL
Pooncube (4:10:29 PM): Link removed
Pooncube signed off at 4:10:34 PM
Seeing as I already owned myself by downloading a link he sent me, these additional lures aren’t really that significant, but I thought I would share them for the laugh. Obviously, the hacker doesn’t realize that most people don’t download files from someone who already tricked them into downloading a virus.