poinpioa Posted March 12, 2008 Share Posted March 12, 2008 Mine is easy to pick. One day i downloaded a music video. It was a WMV file. vlcplayer woulnd't play it - it just showed up flashing colours. mplyer gace an error. so i was forced to use the crappy windows mediaplayer v9. When i started it it said it needed to download a LICENCE to play it so I let it. next thing I know I have windows mediaplyer throwing popup windows looking a bit like IE. Computer drafs to a halt, hdd just keeps whirring. I look at the task manager and the processes list if chock full of really absurd crappy programs. Within 60 seconds entire hdd destroyed. Reboot produced massive load of viruses. My AV program (mcafee i think) ground to a halt. Even my kaspersys died. I had to reformat and reinstall afresh. BUT THAT IS NOT ALL. I reformatted the operating system partition. But the virus spread to EVERY exe even on the non OS partitions. You could see the infected files because they all lost their little icons. WHAT A HEADACHE. I had to delete every system file and pray the data *.doc and *.xls and other files were ok. Eventually reformatted the whole hdd. what was your worst virus experience? edit: ohoh how did this end up in web design.. i wanted to post it in tech/pc chat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Hym. Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 I think it was last summer that some stuff I got from LimeWire completely screwed up my computer, I lost about 8 gigs of my music, all my website passwords and bookmarks, and a lot of programs. I had to take it to Best Buy to get it repaired, but I ended up just replacing the hard drive altogether. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopskin Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Winfixer by at least a few miles. Tenacious little bug. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
just another thug Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 SpySheriff sucks a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopskin Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Yes, but i've never had spysheriff or any other smitfraud variant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YourNeighborhoodKiller Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 I'm not sure what it was called, but people on MSN were complaining to me, saying every time I would sign in, they would be sent a virus from me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saggy Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 The first and last, and needless to say the worse virus I ever had was the Benjamin virus off of Napster back in the day. I can't remember exactly what it did, but I know it targeted your jpeg and mp3 files and was really easy to fix. QUOTE (K^2) ...not only is it legal for you to go around with a concealed penis, it requires absolutely no registration! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Picolini Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 The ony virus I've had that seemed to do anything, did a lot. I can't recall the specifics but it was some back-door rootkit Trojan downloader, which I guess downloads viruses later, and once I turned off UAC it allowed that program to wreak it's havoc. It made my computer lock up after about 8 hours, and it ran a bit slow. Other than that... I don't think it did much. Sadly, I gave up on trying to get rid of it and just reformatted and reinstalled Windows. Wasn't a real problem as I was able to transfer my files to another PC. One thing it taught me was to be very careful at what I download and scan often. I don't understand the reward people get in giving other people viruses, it really achieves nothing but making them feel good about damaging other's PC's. Same with hackers, they're all a bunch of losers who need to get a real hobby. Maybe instead of making viruses or working at breaking into other peoples computers, how about writing programs and stuff. At least you can make money that way... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forfit Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 I only remember getting one virus on my own system and it was something along the lines of a Trojan Backdoor rootkit thing disguised as a .html extension. AVG took care of it and i never saw any effects of the virus. But i've fixed many computers of friends/family that had viruses that made me pull out my hair. Like the ones that seemed to revive themselves even after you removed them with anti-virus program, that's if the virus didn't disable the AV to begin with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Democrab Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Does IE count as a virus? it sucks just as much as one. Would have to be Smitfraud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freak2121 Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Holy sh*t i got the exact same thing a few months ago! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHXC Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 My mum's a noob at the internet, and one day a popup came up in her FireFox something like "Scan you computer now to fix viruses". She thought it was a good idea, so downloaded it, and it installed a few viruses on her computer. They f*cked up the startup, and made the computer run really slowly. Took a while to fix it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTank Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Well, mine isn't too bad... It formatted my whole C-drive, and blew it. I just had to buy a new one. Nothing was really harmed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZAZEL Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Quite a few years ago, on the very first PC I ever owned, I got the so called "Tjernobyl-virus". It spreads all over your harddrive and waits for the date to change to April 26th. On this date in 1986, a Ukrainian nuclear power plant melted down, and on that date the Tjernobyl-computervirus will be activated, and your whole harddrive will be wiped without warning - i.e. a digital "melt down". It's quite clever, really. Certainly one of the more interesting viruses around. And I got it on April 22nd, so I had a few days to sort it out. Luckily there was a repair tool available on the net. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saggy Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 The ony virus I've had that seemed to do anything, did a lot. I can't recall the specifics but it was some back-door rootkit Trojan downloader, which I guess downloads viruses later, and once I turned off UAC it allowed that program to wreak it's havoc. It made my computer lock up after about 8 hours, and it ran a bit slow. Other than that... I don't think it did much. Sadly, I gave up on trying to get rid of it and just reformatted and reinstalled Windows. Wasn't a real problem as I was able to transfer my files to another PC. One thing it taught me was to be very careful at what I download and scan often. I don't understand the reward people get in giving other people viruses, it really achieves nothing but making them feel good about damaging other's PC's. Same with hackers, they're all a bunch of losers who need to get a real hobby. Maybe instead of making viruses or working at breaking into other peoples computers, how about writing programs and stuff. At least you can make money that way... Well, the majority of virus or "malware" written today is just about ways to make money be it through advertisement, identity theft, or other shady business practices in reality. For example, the virus you have was probably one that downloaded programs that served up pop-up ads for some huge spam network. There's just not a whole lot of people that are writing this code to be really malicious now days; after all, why destroy a computer when you can utilize it to make money? Using this principle, there are some "notorious" spammers that have racked up millions, and paid thousands to the technically capable to write the code needed to do it. On the legal side of it, but probably no where near as lucrative, you have those programmers for anti-virus software, fire-wall software, etc. that were probably once hackers themselves. These are the people that know how to exploit the holes, so they're the ones hired to fix them. A common occurrence among these types of people, is that they were formerly involved with "illegal" hacking, and many of the more "famous" or "mentionable" of them have usually been reformed after some kind of conviction. Both of these things make quite a bit of money. So, there is a big of an attraction for some people to get into that kind of thing. In fact, now days since penalties are so much harsher than they were in the 90s, the price at which coders offer their illicit services is far more lucrative than any software company could offer, and people are buying. However, as far as the more old-school virus ones, the really malicious ones that destroyed data and infrastructures, it seems like they come from people that have some kind of political agenda, or a complete lack of and loathing for politics, generally one of the two. I mean, it seems every time that one of these malicious virus codes is released, it comes back to some kind of agenda, and it is usually political. Generally these types of people are ones with great potential, that is generally wasted on this "stunt". Generally the types that you see wanting to just simply destroy stuff and get their kicks, could never even hope to write some of this code, and could probably not do better than some script that deletes a person's files. Well, that was unnecessary long, but, uhh... That's my $0.02 QUOTE (K^2) ...not only is it legal for you to go around with a concealed penis, it requires absolutely no registration! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Picolini Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Yeah, I have heard of ex-hackers and virus makers getting hired for anti-virus/firewall companies since they know how to find the weaknesses in systems. Still, I just don't see the pleasure in hurting innocent people in the first place. There wouldn't need to be anti-virus programs and firewalls if it weren't for them in the first place. IT's a self made industry damn it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daviescirca93 Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 Mine is probably when my msn got some sort of bug that opened and closed a convo with everyone online, and i wouldnt be able to open a new convo, troublesome little thing. Plus it sent a link that said something like "omg you naked?!" followed by a link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deji Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 i laugh at all your virus encounters! huhahaaa ! jk. but basically there are a few simple steps to not gettin a virus... (link: links to my website, the reason its there is for an example of how to escape virus danger) P2P Programs... Limewire/Bit Torrent ect: I aint gonna say don't use 'em. But be careful what you download. exe files are a no-no unless you have a good anti-virus and are sure you know what you are doing. Mp3's Mp4's Avi's- All media is safe to download (Limewire also makes handy tabs to choose which type of file you want- Music, Vids ect.)... BUT if you play one and it can't play it and comes up with an error msg or the screen shows a selection... DON'T click anything. No Ok's... just close the media player (safer with task mngr) and delete the file- and empty the recycle bin or use CCleaner. Website Downloading By far the most risky thing... When you click on a link, you are in danger of a virus. No matter what the link says... If you are on a large scale website such as myspace all the links should be ok (excluding people's myspace pages) but some websites may link to dangerous viruses... When you hover over a link text shows up at the bottom corner of your screen (well, with ie anyway...) telling you where it links to. at the end of the text there may be a .htm or another 3 letter word/association. If it says exe than it's giving you an application which you can run. But it may be a virus so be careful and examine the site and what it says it is. Also if you were to click on a webpage that has a normal extension, that could give you a virus too! If you have avg antivirus (even the free version) or any other good anti- virus then it should pop up immediatly to tell you that that website has given you a virus- just by visiting it! (i think it's something to do with cookies) NEVER argue with your antivirus, unless you have a freak one that is really dumb. Dodgy Sites There is no REAL way to tell if a site is dodgy. But with common sense you can avoid the chances. Take 50 Scripts.com, I'd suggest not to go there as i got a virus from a download. But look at the site! It looks very bad and down the page is a script for download called 'Virus Script'. It may be perfectly legit (for you) but if the site is giving you the chance to give someone a virus... who says they won't give you one! Anyway just don't be dumb! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GodfatherITB Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 I've never had any really bad viruses or anything. I think the worst I got was something that f*cked with my instant messenger and sent a link to the virus to everyone on my list. I sorted it out quickly and I haven't had any problems since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deji Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 My mum's a noob at the internet, and one day a popup came up in her FireFox something like "Scan you computer now to fix viruses". She thought it was a good idea, so downloaded it, and it installed a few viruses on her computer. They f*cked up the startup, and made the computer run really slowly. Took a while to fix it. my mums a pc tech! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronnyboy Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 I'm not sure what it was called, but people on MSN were complaining to me, saying every time I would sign in, they would be sent a virus from me. Yeah, it would do that. I had one were the computer would freeze everytime I went to execute a program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Korin14 Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 I don't think i ever got a major virus on my computer,but i got a huge glitch/bug on it. So here it is,i get this huge lag on my computer,and all my games/internet are slow as heck.Now it's getting better,it was around last summer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grand Theft Auto Dude Posted March 26, 2008 Share Posted March 26, 2008 The worst virus I have ever had was a installer for a free Image Editing program (Read: A crack for Photoshop CS3). It f*cked with the startup, no programs would run, it reset my Security Software license, and (for some reason) changed the Shutdown menu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewbot Posted March 26, 2008 Share Posted March 26, 2008 Worst I ever got was a browser hijacker that would hijack firefox a couple of times a day, turning it into a "You've been INFECTED with MALWARE! Click here to remove it" or, "Your computer keeps track of all the adult sites you go to, which can blah blah" which got really annoying, had to close them with task manager, and I lost all the tabs I had going. A few scans with Ad-aware and CA Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware took care of it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deji Posted March 26, 2008 Share Posted March 26, 2008 The worst virus I have ever had was a installer for a free Image Editing program (Read: A crack for Photoshop CS3). It f*cked with the startup, no programs would run, it reset my Security Software license, and (for some reason) changed the Shutdown menu. cracks eh? naughty naughty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Horror Is Alive Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 I thought cracks were only naughty if you didn't own the genuine program... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingvercetti Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 I've never had a major virus or really any virus at all, to the best of my knowledge. I do regular scans and scan everything I download, and generally just be really careful. Even on an old machine that I'd been running online for about 3 years with no anti-virus (don't ask), when I finally stuck one on, scan showed I had about 4 trojans or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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