*sigh* another trojan infection

Discussion in 'Windows XP Security' started by eatup, Sep 22, 2015.

  1. eatup

    eatup

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    That's 2x this year I've gotten infected with a trojan. The first time, I was browsing some pics (not porn) on Bing images. When I clicked the image's url, the popup wouldn't go away, and I was using IE8.

    This time, I was using one of those file hosting websites. You know the link that says, "click to download", did just that and a trojan-infested popup appeared. I only used IE8 b/c I couldn't generate the download url in my other browsers.

    Moral of the story? I'm never going to use IE8 again other than for OneDrive. When I wipe this HDD clean, I will have IE8 in a virtual machine when the need arises.

    2nd moral: MSE is quite surprisingly good. Both times caught the infection as they happened. Allows me to do damage control in a timely manner.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2015
    eatup, Sep 22, 2015
    #1
  2. eatup

    Elizabeth23

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    I use WOT, web of trust, for ie and firefox, even though it is user ratings, I have been lucky not to get infected,

    I do not visit any website that is marked in any other color than green.

    it has helped so far, and I also use Malwarebytes anti exploit, runs 24/7. :)
     
    Elizabeth23, Sep 22, 2015
    #2
  3. eatup

    eatup

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    I am back! Typing this on a wiped clean HDD with XP host reinstalled. All that's left is to set up my XP virtual machine guest. Will have a look at those suggestions...
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2015
    eatup, Sep 26, 2015
    #3
  4. eatup

    Elizabeth23

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    okey dokey, :)
     
    Elizabeth23, Sep 26, 2015
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  5. eatup

    FranceBB

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    Try to refrain from using IE8 as much as you can and use Chrome or Firefox instead.
    If you need a browser that doesn't require a lot of RAM (even if it's not that good, but still better than IE8), try k-meleon.

    As to the antivirus, give a chance to avast.
    I'm one of the beta tester and we are doing a very good job with XP.
    Also, you have the possibility to launch programs in sandbox in order to avoid being infected. We are going to support XP 'till 2017 with the program updates and after that with just the virus definition updates.
    Besides, people using avast and XP dropped from 23% (2014) to 13% (today), but 13% still means 27.43 million people..
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2015
    FranceBB, Sep 26, 2015
    #5
  6. eatup

    eatup

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    I will continue to use IE8 and it will be from within a disposal VM image...
     
    eatup, Sep 26, 2015
    #6
  7. eatup

    Termingamer2-JD

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    I had an issue running Avast on XP: it only ran under one account, on any others (including admins) it crashed.
     
    Termingamer2-JD, Sep 27, 2015
    #7
  8. eatup

    eatup

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    Typing this from within VirtualPC 2007. Initially ran slow as a snail. But speed is now acceptable after everything has loaded. I have MSE running on the host XP OS and also MSE running from within this virtual machine. I thought it might stall the guess OS, but it's surprisingly usable with MSE installed here too. Managed to dl about 5Gb of TV shows so far into this VM. Anyone watching Death Note 2015? It's surprisingly good.

    The only issue I have is to extract the shows I downloaded, I would have to mount the vhd image from Win7 using diskpart commands (can't save files larger than 1Gb to the host OS using shared folders). But it's no biggie if it means I get to abandon this vhd image the moment it gets infected...
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2015
    eatup, Sep 27, 2015
    #8
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