File Sharing & Spyware

Last night I tried to clean up a friend's computer that was so badly compromised you could not even get spybot started. So, I started by instead forcing a start in safe mode (start by pressing F8 about one or twice a second at startup until you get a menu allowing you to choose safe mode). Plugged in my USB flash drive and installed Spybot Search & Destroy and ran it without updates. Went to the system config utility (msconfig on older windows and Help Options on newer). Turned off run-on-startup of just about everything. It was then late and I told them to go back and update SSD and run it again. I highly suggested removing Morpheus which I suspect was the vector for the infestation. Hope it all works but I won't be surprised if they call me back. Scrub to bare metal might be needed.

See this piece in this last weeks The Inquirer for some more insight in avoiding trouble.
http://theinquirer.net/?Article=31675

Tags: spyware, morpheus, screensavers