Calling all geeks!

[annathepiper]

Okay, so as of late I've been noticing a disturbing spike in the usage of bandwidth on our DSL bills, so solarbird has advised me and the rest of the house that we should be verifying that our network machines are clean of any spyware or virii or other nasty little bugs that might have snuck in under our radar, since some of these bastards can in fact do that now even if you don't do stuff like open email attachments and the like.

With this in mind, I need to put out a call for assistance! I'm pretty sure my box is good, as I regularly install Windows Updates as soon as they come in and I've got active anti-virus software on the system. But I want to help mamishka with her PC, and since I've never actually had to do a thorough cleaning on a (possibly) infected box before, I would like to solicit recommendations for the best way to go about doing this. I have heard others frequently mention things like AdAware and Spybot and suchlike; what programs do y'all find are best at finding the crap and nuking it? And do I want to run something like this before or after slapping all current required updates onto the box? (It's a Win98 box.)

Anything else I need to know for this mission of machine inspection is also solicited. Thanks in advance, folks. :)

Comments

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

AdAware is tops in my book.

[talyrath.livejournal.com]

I use both Spybot and AdAware on machines that I know are infected, since you're liable to miss some if you just run one spyware hunter. For basic scans on a clean machine, I use AdAware.

[annathepiper]

Okay! I'm trying them both out tonight on my own box and I'm seeing it find stuff without my having expected it. DAMN. :) Okay, looks like I get to clean up my own box first. ;P :)

[talyrath.livejournal.com]

Some of the stuff that it cleans up is fairly innocuous, like data miner cookies from Doubleclick. You get those just by typing www.anything in a browser window.

[veiledpanda.livejournal.com]

My father recommended to me the combination of these two programs, as well. When I get a chance to sweep my machine, I'll be using both of 'em. So here's another vote for a double whammy! ;)

[annathepiper]

Gotcha, thanks babe. :) I did both of 'em last night on my box and even found a few things... mostly tracking cookies. But it was startling nonetheless!

[kent.livejournal.com]

I definitely try to use Ad-Aware and Spybot regularly. You can use Spybot to block the browser home page from being changed without your permission, and Ad-Aware may flag that locked registry entry as being a problem, I can't remember. But between the two of them, you should be in pretty good shape. Someone on the latest news post, maybe on page 3 (?), recommended yet another spyware killer.

I think both work on Windows 98.

I would hope that a basic firewall, like ZoneAlarm, would let you know if an unidentified program was trying to access the Internet. Maybe she could install one of those?

[annathepiper]

Ah, I hadn't thought of ZoneAlarm; I'll look into that, too. And see about putting Spybot and Adaware on her box. Thanks, Kent!

[seimaisin.livejournal.com]

I'm a Spybot advocate - our department IT person at work even uses it to clean the computers in clinic when someone stupidly goes to the wrong website.

For preventative maintenance, I definitely recommend installing some sort of pop-up blocker, as that kills a good deal of that nasty stuff. Either install the Google toolbar into IE, or use Mozilla's browser - I don't know which you'd prefer, but they both work wonders.

[annathepiper]

I've futzed with older versions of Mozilla, but haven't dealt with it in some time so I don't know how well it's improved over the versions I'd played with before, or what it has to offer that would make it a good alternate to IE. I'm willing to have the case be made to me though. ^_^

Giving Spybot a shot tonight and AdAware as well, on my own system. OH LOOK! Tracking cookies!

Mozilla

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Gazer & I have both been using Mozilla Firefox 0.8 for a while now and are pretty happy with it. Between that & Zone Alarm, the amount of crap coming through has dropped to nearly nil. (Not counting the usual ads for male enhancement & such.) We tried briefly upgrading to version 0.9, but it had a lot of bugs, like not accepting the plugins that were supposed to work with it. I've heard they've already come out with 0.91, haven't tried that one out yet.

Firefox 0.8 works really well on our XP machine, maybe it's compatible with older Windows systems.

Re: Mozilla

[annathepiper]

AH, this seems to answer the question I just asked cafiorello, i.e., whether Firefox is a new edition of the Mozilla browser. :) Thanks for the info!

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

I use Mozilla at work. Not gutsy enough to go with Firefox, so I'm one version back. When I had a Win98 machine, I had trouble with it locking up, but haven't had any trouble at all with XP.

At home, we're using AdAware. It's hard to convince a 13-year-old to stay away from questionable sites, but you can teach him to use protection! ;)

Cathy

[annathepiper]

*snickers re: son*

And duly noted about Mozilla. Maybe I'll give it another look. :) I take it Firefox is a new edition of the Mozilla browser?

[firni.livejournal.com]

In addition to the programs everybody else has listed (which get rid of spyware and such), I'd also suggest SpywareBlaster.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Prevent the installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers, and other potentially unwanted pests.

Block spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox.

Restrict the actions of potentially dangerous sites in Internet Explorer.

I put it on my dad's machine and now have fewer family computer "housecalls" as a result.

[annathepiper]

I see that the Spybot guys recommend this thing as well. Thanks for the tip!

[lyricae.livejournal.com]

Joe and I both run AdAware and Spybot frequently.

[annathepiper]

Gotcha, and thanks for chiming in. :) I'm giving both of them a test run on my box tonight.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

I've had AdAware for a while (need to run it again), and it's done well for me. Haven't tried Spybot.

I'm seriously looking into switching over to Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird for my browsing/e-mailing, though.

[annathepiper]

Duly noted and thanks for chiming in. :)

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

AdAware and Spybot, baby. You can sometimes download a free network sniffer, just in case.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

i'd install BOTH ad-aware AND spybot!
running BOTH on a reg basis, as in WEEKLY, and leaving spybot as resident ALL the time!
i also have winpatrol, which helps prevent my home page being hijacked, and also let's me know when changes are being made to my OS when i install stuff, so if i think it's doing something i don't like, i can stop it!

also, i think it's symantec that has a checker so that you can tell if your system has been infiltrated... last time i checked mine, it was clean :)

bb

[annathepiper]

Whoops, I managed to confuse LJ! I had three copies of this comment of yours on here, and answered the one I tried to delete. DOH!

However, again, thanks for the recommendations! :) I'm giving both Spybot and AdAware a shot on my box tonight; I've already got Norton Antivirus installed and running.

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

I love Adaware. I install it on friends' and clients' machines when they start saying "Internet Explorer is really slow now". I'm thinking about adding Spybot just to try it out. I also use AVG for my general virus scanning needs.

[annathepiper]

What's AVG, then?

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

http://www.grisoft.com

European made damn good virus thingy. comes in a tech-support-less but still including all updates absolutely free version as well as a paid single license and paid multi-license version.

[annathepiper]

Ahhh okay! Thanks for the link. :)

[mnemozine.livejournal.com]

Want to make sure her box really is clean? Use both Ad-Aware and Spybot (as many have recommended) AND go use McAfee's Stinger, as well as Norton, and any other free/and or preferred anti-virus system.

Oh? And if its a MS OS? Use SafeMode.

Unless this advice is all after the fact! ;)

[annathepiper]

Well, we haven't yet determined whether her box is actually compromised--the thing is, I want to find out whether the spike in DSL bandwidth usage has been due to something unauthorized happening on one of our machines, and I figured part of the way to do this would be to make sure that the various Windows boxen on the house network are clean.

(It needs to be done anyway, so that's okay in general!)

I also need to teach myself how to use tcpdump on Linux so I can figure out whether that can tell me if any specific machines are putting out unusual amounts of traffic.

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

the laptops and the frob are on wireless, yes? is that locked down sufficiently so that none of the neighbours are helping themselves to your bandwidth?

[annathepiper]

Whoa, LJ took a whole MONTH to get me this comment mailed to me? What the heck? That's pretty impressive turnaround time. ;P

But to answer your question--yes, our wireless network has a big ol' 128-bit key slapped on it, so nobody should be helping themselves to our bandwidth. We'll get that set back up here at the new place as well. Right now, I'm on dialup.