Ouch...

Nasty! Any idea how it happened?

Finally figured out how to do scans using the Bitdefender rescure cd thingie. Knoppix based. Just can't figure out how to update the signatures.  No network connection...though if I had any idea of what it was asking for to set it up manually...I might be able to do that.

I'll probably wind up pulling the drive out, hooking up to the eSATA cable to the desktop and do a scan that way. Who knows.  If not...I was thinking it was about time for a fresh install anyhow...lots of trial programs that seem to have left a lot of junk behind. 

Using the old laptop for now.  The Knoppix based rescue thing detected lots of stuff.  Sigh.  Some though were not "nasties" but parts of legit programs. Hard to read the full line of each detected item...till later in the log which was bigger than the scan view. (Parts of things like True Image, Partition Magic, plus installed AV/anti-malware programs.  Pretty well killed it.)  It did boot but not very workable...plus it still missed some of the legit bad guys...which started replicating again.

So...when I get time...time to remove, save data and wipe clean. 

I'd wound up reading at a site I can't remember. A busy place...lots of stuff going on, animated ads and whatnot.  And one of those that has lots of words of phrases in what you are reading "active links"...if that's the right phrase.  Click on it and usually wind up at someplace trying to sell you something.

Oh.  Just a thought hit me. One of the few things I don't like about the new Toshiba is the touchpad.  Never have gotten it to where I'm comfortable with it.  It's super-sensitive...I'm constantly dragging & dropping things I don't mean to. Or while moving the cursor around a page...accidentally clicking on links I don't mean to.  ROFL  I'd forgotten about that.  (I even signed up for a book deal, by accident,  from Reader's Digest when filling out a sweeps months ago.)

Or maybe it was from a spat a while back when I was still using Personas...skins for Firefox. Had a lot of trouble with links in Google hits getting redirected or something.  I've done countless scans, online and off, and didn't find anything.  But for several months now it's been taking two to three minutes for the laptop to "shut down". 

Hm. 

Sure hate to hear about your laptop issues. You might want to use your Knoppix CD to save your data to your PC so that you don't tie into any boot sector stuff from your laptop drive, then scan what you pull over afterward.

I just make low throaty sounds and scratch here and there.

Yeah, it's a bit harder to infect a CD. 

Somewhat funny (ironic funny) in a way.  It was just a few days ago I was reading about websites that don't even require a "click" by a visitor to be able to infect them.

And something new to me, that I ran across while googling one of the bugs I got, is now there are nasties that attack routers:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/06/malware_silently_alters_wirele_1.html

A reminder to myself.  If I can remember later to revisit that page with this laptop...but use the little USB travel mouse.  And maybe also use the desktop.  Maybe setting off links is more problematic to the touchpad or a laptop in general. 

There are "drive by" infections for Linux and Mac as well as Windows.  I've heard of one that can nail all 3.  It's getting a bit creepy.  It's one of the reasons I use the WOT add-on in FF.

I quit doing multi-OS drives just because of the boot sector malware.  You can easily pass around a boot sector virus on a usb stick, as well as a hard drive.

I try to be especially careful with stuff downloaded in Linux since I share files with Windows boxes.

Originally posted by DonWatkins Oh yeah, those "context" ads. When I recently inherited a web site removing those was the first thing I did.  However it was a very large chunk of money. Apparently advertisers pay a lot for those ads, clicked for not.

I wouldn't mind those ads if they didn't go off just by the cursor moving over them.  But heck...they are like a proximity switch...just got to get close to set them off.