Well I fell for the latest movie thingy release on a torrent website and downloaded what I thought was a movie. Turns out it was not a movie it was a fecking dummy file with an attached codec pack.
In order to watch the movie it requested that I installed the codec pack, That should of had alarm bells ringing straight away. Anyway I decided to go ahead and install the codec package.
Which infact was not a codec pack and the dummy file was a not a movie, unknowingly I had just installed a Trojan and a rootkit. Doh!! :bomb:
I know my stupid fault, now this is the part that annoys me. I use AVG internet security, AVG never picked up the trojan or the rootkit. My computer was starting to become sluggish and I knew something was wrong as i have a reasonable powered machine.
I ran AVG again, found nothing. So I installed MalwareBytes (https://www.malwarebytes.org) ran the scan and it picked up the trojan but not the rootkit (which at that point I never knew I had a rootkit). MalwareBytes removed the trojan but never found the rootkit. Although to the credit of their popup reporting tool is of reasonable quality.
Something was still wrong, my computer still did not feel it`s usual power, MalwareBytes was showing popups saying website block possible infected website, it was doing this over and over to around 10 domains (which I tracked back to Russian IP addresses) I check the running processes and found their to be 4 maybe 5 instances of explorer.exe (Win 7) with a couple of almost using 2gb memory each.
So I ran AVG and MalwareBytes again on deep scans, both came up clean which is incorrect there was a rootkit running malware tasks. After reading forum thread after thread on the MalwareBytes website, I found a thread in which the user was experiencing similar problems to myself, someone said try using Hitman Pro: http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro/
I downloaded Hitman Pro ran the scans and guess what it found the offending rootkit and removed it, that AVG and MalwareBytes both failed to pick up on two scans each. Hitman Pro saved the day.
I`ll be more careful next time, I wrote this thread as a warning and help if anyone has the same problem to save time as it took me around 3 hours to diagnose and disinfect the malware.
In order to watch the movie it requested that I installed the codec pack, That should of had alarm bells ringing straight away. Anyway I decided to go ahead and install the codec package.
Which infact was not a codec pack and the dummy file was a not a movie, unknowingly I had just installed a Trojan and a rootkit. Doh!! :bomb:
I know my stupid fault, now this is the part that annoys me. I use AVG internet security, AVG never picked up the trojan or the rootkit. My computer was starting to become sluggish and I knew something was wrong as i have a reasonable powered machine.
I ran AVG again, found nothing. So I installed MalwareBytes (https://www.malwarebytes.org) ran the scan and it picked up the trojan but not the rootkit (which at that point I never knew I had a rootkit). MalwareBytes removed the trojan but never found the rootkit. Although to the credit of their popup reporting tool is of reasonable quality.
Something was still wrong, my computer still did not feel it`s usual power, MalwareBytes was showing popups saying website block possible infected website, it was doing this over and over to around 10 domains (which I tracked back to Russian IP addresses) I check the running processes and found their to be 4 maybe 5 instances of explorer.exe (Win 7) with a couple of almost using 2gb memory each.
So I ran AVG and MalwareBytes again on deep scans, both came up clean which is incorrect there was a rootkit running malware tasks. After reading forum thread after thread on the MalwareBytes website, I found a thread in which the user was experiencing similar problems to myself, someone said try using Hitman Pro: http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro/
I downloaded Hitman Pro ran the scans and guess what it found the offending rootkit and removed it, that AVG and MalwareBytes both failed to pick up on two scans each. Hitman Pro saved the day.
Hitman Pro - Second Opinion Malware Scanner
If your child is not feeling well and you suspect he or she has a virus infection you're going to visit your doctor. But what do you do when the doctor tells you that he cannot find anything but your child still does not feel very well? Of course, you go to visit another doctor for a second opinion.
This is the same what HitmanPro does for your computer. HitmanPro is a second opinion scanner, designed to rescue your computer from malware (viruses, trojans, rootkits, etc.) that have infected your computer despite all the security measures you have taken (such as anti virus software, firewalls, etc.).
I`ll be more careful next time, I wrote this thread as a warning and help if anyone has the same problem to save time as it took me around 3 hours to diagnose and disinfect the malware.