Jan 23 2010
Well I promised . .
so here it is, this evenings post . .its been an exciting week in the life of Vince, to start the week I had 2 PC’s at work infected by what I’ll call the DHL email virus.
This was a little bugger of a trojan/malware that came via a zipped file attached to an email purporting to be from DHL, the body of the email went along these lines :
Dear customer!
The courier company was not able to deliver your parcel by your address. Cause: Error in shipping address.
You may pickup the parcel at our post office personaly!
Please attention!
The shipping label is attached to this e-mail. Please print this label to get this package at our post office.
Please do not reply to this e-mail, it is an unmonitored mailbox.
Thank you.
DHL.
once the zipped file was opened it contained what appeared to be an excel spreadsheet, however upon clicking on this spreadsheet you discovered that it was in-fact an executable file, which within and instance had disabled/uninstalled your Anti-Virus software and proceeded to install a fake Anti-Virus program which was now telling you that you had 70+ virus’s that it could clean, but only if you bought the full version for $49 by entering your credit card details, it also installed a number of backdoor trojans and probably for good measure a key-logger.
Well after the 2 users informed me (happened to 2 people on 2 different days, even after I’d sent an email after the first instance warning people of this email) I downloaded Malwarebytes and Superantispyware onto a USB stick and booted the PC’s into Safe Mode (follow the link to learn how to boot into Safe Mode.
Once into Safe Mode I installed both programs and run one after the other, which resulted in over 80+ virus/Trojans hiding on the PC’s, so as instructed it removed them and rebooted the PC, however this wasn’t the end of the problem as one of these nasty little buggers messed about with the registry which resulted in first the Logon/Logoff screen looping every-time you entered your User details and also once this issue had been resolved denied access to the Task Manager and Display properties for the desktop.
After googling for a bit I found these instructions for changing the Registry settings back to there original perameters (details here, much thanks go to the Ian Luke Kane for posting this info), there are 2 solutions to resolve the issue, me being me went for the Tricky one, I suggest if you have a Windows disc as it asks to go for the easy one as if you don’t know much about Registry editing you could do more damage than good.
Once I’d completed these steps, just to be sure all the virus’s were gone I removed the hard-drives from the infected PC’s and attached them to my PC as secondary drives and ran Malwarebytes, Superantispyware and Mcafee Virus scan on them, which resulted in about 6 more infected files being found, after running one more time with a clean bill of health, reinstalled the drives back in there original PC’s, then reinstalled the Anti-virus software . . . I then sent out an email again warning people of this DHL Virus Email . . . touch wood no one else has so far fallen for it and got infected.
After the excitement of virus infections at work it was time for some relaxation and downtime for Vince, how better than to get on Twitter and chat to various people I know on there and it was thanks to these Twitter types that I made a wonderful discovery which has swelled the 38,000 tracks I have the option to play in my iTunes library to well over 100,000 tracks.
So what is this discovery then ?
Well its a piece of software called Simplify Media, which lets you share your music on your PC using programs like iTunes and Windows Media player, its like Spotify in a sense, but different, once you’ve installed the software you can invite other people you know who use it to share your library and vice-versa, once you’ve added them you’ll need to ensure that you’ve turned on view shared library’s in iTunes, wait a little while for the information for their library of music to be updated on your machine and then you can simply click on a track in their shared library in your itunes.
Here’s what Simplify Medias FAQ says about how it works :
Simplify Media software lets you browse and play remote music using the iTunes, Front Row, Winamp, Windows Media and Rhythmbox players, and remote photos using the Simplify photo viewer, iPhoto, and Windows Explorer. Specialized music and photo applications are also available for the iPhone and iPod touch mobile devices.
Media is streamed directly between computers over the Internet within small groups that you control. Your group can be made up entirely of your own computers, for example home and office or home and iPhone. You can also invite close friends and family to join. Once an invitation is accepted, you will be able to view and play each other’s libraries when online. See more
All I can say about this piece of software is go and download it, its fucking amazing, there’s even an app for the iPhone which lets you stream your music onto the iPhone(download it here , which for me is great, I’ve so far used this app to stream music to my iPhone and then using the Blue-tooth connection from my iPhone I’ve streamed this same music through my car stereo, so instead of being limited to what CD’s or waht tracks I have on my iPhone I now have 100,000’s of tracks to choose from while driving my car . . . how fucking cool is that.
The other good thing about Simplify Media, is that if I’m at someone house and there music’s shit, as long as they have an Internet connection and iTunes (just a case of downloading it) I can install Simplify Media on their PC logon using my details and I have access to my music to play . . get innnnnn, no more shitty music . . (not saying all my friends music is shit by the way)
Heres a screen shoot of the app open showing just how many tracks I have access to stream now (names blacked out for obvious reasons)
If you haven’t got this app, what are you doing still reading go and download it now and if your a friend or mine email me your Username and I’ll invite you to share my library.
Now after that immense plug of Simplify Media, back to the mundane part of my life.
Wednesday was spent at electriks helping Luke Unabomber with Mac problems/issues again, actually I can’t call this mundane as it was a laugh doing it, Lukes a funny guy when your trying to teach him Mac stuff, anyway just a case of showing him how to move files from one Mac to another.
Thursday was curry night were I prepared my body and soul for a rather nice Tandoori Chicken Masala which I must say was very very tasty, though it has repeated on me throughout the day . . but it was worth it.
And now to today Friday . . well believe it or not I’m ending the week resolving Virus infected PC’s again, this time, its a laptop that’s suffering, not from the same virus, but one very similar i.e. it installs fake software and Trojans, again I’ve run much the same procedures as with the previous machines and thus far its discovered about 80+ infected files, I’ve cleaned these off and now am just in the process of running the secondary scans, they should be finished in about another 1/2hr, which has given me all this time to update my blog.
Hoping that once the scans are finished it’ll just be a case of installing some free anti-virus software on it and passing it back to the owner and seeing how much he’s willing to give me for doing it, I usually charge a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and 4o Lambert and Butler, which I think is fairly reasonable . . don’t you ?
As for tomorrow I’ve got to pick up an PC from Amanda at the Nook which again is virus infected, so after walking Blue grabing a Latte in Electriks I’ll spend a couple of hours sorting that out and by the most of my weekend will be gone, but hey I enjoy doing it and one day I might need a favour doing which they can help me with . . . what comes around . . goes around as my old mate used to say . .
There as promised a post to my blog, hope its to your satisfaction and isn’t to long and boring . . . if it is tough shit I’ve typed it now so there . .
Good night
















