Please virus scan any CD's/Media that are handed to you.

Hi ATS,

I was at the mall walking back to my car and got hit up by someone handing out CD's with a documentary of 9/11. I took it home and poped it in a old P3 i use for parts testing, well the virus scan went nuts, crashed the pc with a BSOD. I ended up wiping the hard drive and putting the CD in the microwave. Just please make sure to update virus databases (and run full scans), anti-malware is up-to-date, or your running Linux w/Clam AV (Wink Wink). If you think you have a virus the first thing to do is unplug your PC from any networks (Ethernet Cable).

Cheers!

SourD

Wait, why would you put the CD in the microwave?

reply to post by sourdiesel


First - thanks for the advice

Second - You appear to be some sort of tekkie and I'm an ignoramus, could you kindly recommend some free antivirus/malware stuff that I can downland please .

Thanks

Moo

If the CD was intentionally loaded with malware, you might have been able to take it to someone to have them check it out safely, and in the instance of a genuine malicious attack you could have traced it back.

Instead you put the CD in the microwave?

reply to post by moocowman


AVG anti-virus & Comodo Firewall rate highly among the free products for Windows machines

Avast! Free is good, Malware Bytes Anti-Malware Kalm AV (Command Line)/Clam AV is the GUI for Klam AV for Linux.

Maybe I am overly paranoid but If you are doing anything important (Bills, Banking, Stocks, whatever). I would setup Sun's VirtualBox and setup a Linux distribution like Ubuntu or Red Hat in that Virtual machine with a firewall and AV setup. Lets be honest there are a lot of hacks and vulnerabilities to Windows I would only use your Windows if you want to use Windows only programs. Even with the creation of WINE and Cedega you can now run most popular Windows Apps on Linux. Even MS OFFICE LOL

Cheers!

SourD

Avira Anti-Vir

Disable auto play/auto run on your cd/dvd drive, removable drives. That was standard for me after Sony put malware on their music discs a few years back.

reply to post by Whine Flu

why would you put the CD in the microwave?

It's pretty.

Come on man, how gullible can a person be? Don't trust anything some random stranger hands you, no matter what he says it is. You should have just thrown it away immediately or said no thanks and kept walking. This makes me think of the people who just take any pill handed to them at a party. It's crazy.

reply to post by Raverous

You should have just thrown it away immediately
or said no thanks and kept walking.

*shrug*

* Disable autorun, watch videos without running any executables
* Windows virtual machine
* Alternate OS partition
* Old PC that you don't mind reformatting

I'd take any of those choices before I'd depend on a virus scan. Scans aren't very reliable. I once downloaded a couple dozen viruses, stuck them all in a directory together and ran norton antivirus. I think it found three of them.

Originally posted by LordBucket
reply to post by Whine Flu

 

why would you put the CD in the microwave?

It's pretty.

Exactly, also I have better things to do then track some script kid. I deal with hundreds of viruses with my pc repair business, I really just dont have the time. Good idea for anyone coming across those and does feel like a good old Scooby Doo mystery. There are fingerprinting programs that will tell you what the virus does and some other cool things but I think they are not free.

Cheers!

SourD

[edit on 12-2-2010 by sourdiesel]

reply to post by toochaos4u


Yeah Auto-Run is disabled always, any media should be, however my Anti-Virus scans anything that is plugged in before it grants read/write access to that device.

SourD

I think you should double back to the mall once in a while to see if you can get a hold of that person. find out why they are disguising 9/11 documentaries as viruses/malware.

I want to know who this is because if he is part of the truth movement, something like this would taint their street actions.

Too bad you nuked the CD. as a poster said above, it could of been used to figure out wth happened.

Glad you posted this, it reminded me of something of the same nature.

I have a buddy that frequents the free movie sites and downloaded a movie and made copies. He gave me a copy of a movie I wanted to see, but cheap arse me could not wait for it to come out. I had no problems viewing the movie. It wasn't until I downloaded it on my machine to make other copies that it became a problem. It had a bad virus (forget the name) and it screwed my comp bad.

Just be weary of all CD's and DVD's you get that are not from the store! Sometimes you pay for going the cheap route. Just a heads up.

Yep Ill go back and try to get another copy, its the weekend so someone might be there to grab another will let yall know since there seems to be alot of interest in this. Apologies for nuking it.

SourD

reply to post by sourdiesel


I know these are tough times, but how does someone get away with this? Maybe the guy don't even know he's handing out a virus? That would be a good thing to at least try to stop it locally. I wonder how many others are selling this copy elsewhere though.

Originally posted by Rob37n
reply to post by moocowman

 

AVG anti-virus & Comodo Firewall rate highly among the free products for Windows machines

thank you

You should have run the CD under virtualbox and examined the contents/run AV scans/Hijack This etc. to see what it was and how it was affecting the system.

If it crashed that, run virtualbox again but with a linux distro instead of windows.

Could also submit to an online scanner like novirusthanks (they seem to have a downloadable scanner now btw.)

Yeah I know it's easy for me to say this after the fact and you did take precautions by running it in an old machine and probably was expecting to find loose change on it.

Thanks for sharing your story and warning others about it though

Hope you enjoyed the light show!

well, I dont recommend AVAST or AVG, they are not that good

NOD32 is a good option but you need to pay, its not free

a free that I am using right now, it comes free with windows7, you can download from microsoft website, its microsoft essential security

You're not really worthy of being known as a techie or computer nerd until you've switched to using Linux 99% of the time. It is impervious to all Windows viruses.

For n00bs, I suggest kubuntu if you're used to Windows.
www.kubuntu.org...

Otherwise, if you want to learn how to go from the ground up, try ArchLinux...I use it.
www.archlinux.org...

Best of all, Linux is free, fast, constantly upgraded, and open source, meaning the community fixes the problems days after discovery most of the time - not Months or Years like Microsoft.

[edit on 13-2-2010 by joesomebody]