Vocal Voices

A couple of weeks ago they warned us that a major cyber attack was on its way. Has it arrived?

This morning when I switched on I had several problems and am at this moment running anti-malware programmes to try to sort it.

I found that ABP had been completely removed and Avast had been turned off completely. My Chrome toolbar had disappeared completely and when I went into Yahoo it was mayhem. My folders were riddled with purple messages mostly porn that I couldn't delete. I could go to the multi-delete box in my mail folders and get rid that way, but they are also in my folders of saved items so I can't delete those.

The threat notified a while back is specific to Gameover Zeus, GOZeus, or P2PZeus and CryptoLocker.

Advice and free removal tools are here: http://www.getsafeonline.org/nca/

Rodo, what you have looks more like a typical malware/virus attack, and it could be that your address book has been harvested, or one of your friend's address book has been harvested.

I am afraid that you are probably going to have to use all the anti-malware tools available to you in order to disinfect things. Make sure that everything is up to date before you begin, and if you can get new versions via an uninfected computer you should do so. Portable versions, runnable from a USB drive without installing them, are the best, if available.

Thank you so much for the advice WM. What would we do without you. I did do some looking up to see what I could find out, but the replies are so often written in gobbledegook and are so difficult to follow if you haven't got advanced computer knowledge. I have run everything I have, but the thing about getting new versions sounds good advice.

One thing I forgot to mention is for you to change the password(s) for your e-mail/webmail accounts as you begin the clean-up. You should do that from time to time anyway.

I was going to ask about the Zeus thing too WM. I have a newspaper cutting here advising password changes but it doesn't say which are the most important ones to change. I've already done it for anywhere that has financial information about me (Paypal etc) but do I really need to change passwords for sites like VV? Will an email password change alone keep me safe?

Old habits die hard. I change passwords on financial sites, transaction sites and webmail sites about every three months. I change passwords to lock-down programs (AV, Firewall etc.) and my computer's Admin privileges account about every two months. I do not bother with sites such as Tinypic or VV unless things go wrong.

Rodo, Hope you get sorted soon.

You can remove my email address from your records I have not had any problems. Will let you have another one when you are back to normal.

All completely back to normal now Cruiser thank goodness. Your concern is appreciated.

That's good news. Phew!