Strange Problems After Hacking

[tomahawk]

Last month while on internet a message came on computer saying "you have been hacked by Syrian Hacker." I guess he is some hacker in Syria who hacks into computers and steals their software. The computer went off and after that could not turn computer on again.

Now for some reason I can turn computer on again and it works okay but when I click some websites like Yahoo mail a sign comes on saying "this is an untrusted site." I download this security anti-virus software but still the message comes on so I do not read the email or other sites where message comes on.

Is there a way to solve this problem? Is this all from the syrian hacker? i do not know so much about computers and my friends who no computers are also unable to help. Thank you for any assistance.

[anothertorres]

i would highly suggest you wipe that machine completely and re-install from scratch. from scratch, i said.

[siamect]

i would highly suggest you wipe that machine completely and re-install from scratch. from scratch, i said.

Yes good advise... but take a backup of your documents first.

Then vipe, reinstal, add the best AV pack you can find and update it, scan your backup for virus, then restore your documents....

Make sure you do it in the right order...

Good Luck

Martin

[norwayeagle]

Hi.Was it Windows who popped up the script about you have been hacked by a Syrian on your screen?

What is the name of Anti malware, / Firewall / Virus protection programs you have, or had on your computer,(when all this happen)?

[boggle]

"I download this security anti-virus software"

Missus did this and it took me two days of solid work to get all the crap that had been dowloaded because of her one mistake of clicking "ok".

I dare say you have now some big bad germs on your comp now. Make sure your anti virus is up to date and you have no internet connection. Run a scan through your whole comp. Sit back and wait.

There are ways of cleaning your comp of most virus,s and malware but sometimes it is easy to format and reinstall.

Note: even doing this does not ensure all traces of unwanted malware/virus are removed.

Always say NO to download anything from the net you are not sure of.

Cheers

[tomahawk]

Thank you everyone. I will follow your advice here and start over everything from scratch. To answer your questions, I do have Windows but am not sure now where message came from, except when it popped up I was looking up stuff on google. The anti-virus I had then was AVG, and now have Comodo. I have one more question. Since this was hacked does this mean whoever did it has all my information from computer?

[welo]

The reference to the 'Syrian Hacker' doesn't necessarily mean that a person directly targeted your computer. More likely you were infected with malware (virus, trojan) through a website, a pirated software that you installed, a game or tool you downloaded and installed, etc. The malware then (not necessarily on the same day) then automatically triggered this message and the computer shutdown.

I can't really believe that it rendered your PC without the ability to turn it on power-wise - maybe Windows failed to start up? Never mind.

Some attackers use actually simple methods of faking a virus infection to lure you into downloading their 'antivirus' software to get rid of it - which of course is a rogue software which does nothing but look very professional and infect your PC in the background with more malware.

Maybe your original message was just a popup as part of a website that was designed to look like a system message, and your troubles actually started when downloading the supposed antivirus software. Of course a simple web dialog would (usually) not bring your PC down. Your report does not contain enough detail to assess your situation.

However, do NOT download software from the web, as a general rule! Only download from respectable sources such as download.com, filehippo.com, softpedia.com (currently blocked in Thailand). Read the reviews on download.com before downloading. If the software is not listed in either one of them or users warn about it, do not download it.

Googling for anti-malware and anti-virus tools will bring up many dangerous websites that promote fake software (as does searching for hardware drivers as well).

Remember no antivirus solution can protect you 100%, better be more careful in the future.

welo

[TigertheCat]

Good advice welo,I recall a while ago a friend said his computer had slowed down a lot and can I help.

I asked him what antivirus he had installed and he replied that he thought he had an antivirus program installed at some time past.

I checked and he had nothing so I installed Avast and ran a full scan and,quite unbelievably it found 250 infections.

I re installed XP and,lo and behold,his PC runs like new again.