Do not forget, that your TCP/IP stack can contain a hijack that other tools cannot discover.

There is a real threat today, that specifically attacks the TCP/IP stack in your computer.
Many threat scanners cannot find it, or it itself, defeats that purpose.

On a Windows Machine:

Bring up a command prompt in administrator mode ( right click on the the command prompt and select "Run as Administrator")

Type:

Netsh winsock reset

This clears the TCP/IP stack and gets rid of any additions or modifications.

Then, just reboot your computer.

You would be surprised how fast web browsing may become, and also, the un-bility to easily re-infect your computer has become.

Certainly not a revelation, but some just never knew this.

Finally a thread with useful sounding title, and its blank.

Ya, i suppose lots of us got this stack hack. lol

Ok I read it, now its not blank heh.

The gubment has got to have tools we don't know about.

a reply to: nrd101
Yea, pressed return before I entered the content. Sorry.

This trick came right on time to me.

a reply to: Trueman

In the old days, we had applications that would do this, but in Windows 7 and 8, the data structure that stores that stack code is in check summed non-paged pool. Still, covert malware has proven to be able to inject modifications here and still correct the check sum so the operating system does not rat on it. Beyond details than that, this is an overlooked solution to getting at the root cause of a great deal of networking problems.

not seeing anything about a stack based attack at the moment and while a reset of winsock won't harm anything for most people its just a waste of time

a reply to: Maxatoria

We are not talking about a specific attack. What is discussed here is that your stack may become corrupted based upon the needs and direction of a piece of malware that has the ability to modify it. This can have many implications, but the most prevalent, would be to port output to a process (also malware) that can read it in the raw, with the intent on spying on you.

if something can attach itself to the tcp/ip stack that would mean its got itself admin level access which means its pretty much game over unless its trying to stay under the radar which would smell to me of a targeted attack these days, i can remember in the 1990's it was a common thing to reset the stack but that was due to ISP's using their own software with dial up that used to cause all sorts of f--- ups and even in NT3.51/4 i can remember removing and reinstalling tcp/ip as part of just upgrading a network card followed by a slapping on of the latest service pack to get it working

I agree this is mostly for those clinging to XP and below for the most part ( and there's a surprisingly large number of those ) .. but still a useful thing to keep in your utility belt.

I've not had a need to reset the stack in quite some years, but I remember working support at an ISP and it was something we often recommended .. I've moved on to linux administration windows can suck it

Received an applause from _BoneZ_, in which I graciously say Thank You!

It should also be mentioned, that you can clear both stacks independently, thus:
for IPv4, type netsh int ipv4
for IPv6, type netsh int ipv6