Lost Everything and have to hand in IT coursework tomorrow...HELP

asbokid

free4440273 wrote: »

I'll put it bluntly.. the AV software houses are in bed with the malware coders..

^^^wow/ :shocked: really ?

There are lots of people who believe that and I'm one of them.

Occasionally the AV companies get caught red-handed, releasing computer viruses into the wild. When grilled, the culprits always claim that it was an accident. Well they would, wouldn't they?!

We witnessed a similar mindset during the foot and mouth epidemic. Farmers were deliberately infecting their own livestock to win state compensation that far exceeded the meat value.

This from a 2005 thread...

It is well known that Norton, Mcafee and the like hire known virus creators and hackers to work for them. I think the logic of this is just as mentioned. They want someone who can think of the next step in virus attacks. This being said you have a person whose personality is to try to beat the system. It makes sense that this person would be very tempted to try to one up the people he/she is now working with and try to introduce a virus they can't beat.

While the overall mission (secret or otherwise) may not be to release viruses, the companies' culture may be one that encourages and possibly even subsidizes the creation and release of viruses.

Also as mentioned earlier (about lesser known companies), a Russian company that was making a name for itself as a virus killer was busted a year or so ago for introducing viruses so they could be the first to fix it. So while they were not packaging viruses with their software they were introducing viruses into the world so they could be the heros.

free4440273

Is there a (legitimate ) source for this though asbo ?

asbokid

free4440273 wrote: »

Is there a (legitimate ) source for this though asbo ?

What do you define as 'legitimate', though?

No commercial publication will baldly state that AV developers are in bed with malware coders.

If they did, there would be immediate litigation and their advertising revenues from the AV houses would dry up over night.

We trusted the media - both state and corporate - to tell us the truth about Iraq's (non-existent) WMD programme.

Yet the media lied about WMDs as a service to Big Business which needed the phony threat as the pretext for war.

Since the media, as a service to Big Business, will fool the little people to start a genocidal war, I wouldn't rely on it to tell us the dirty truth about the billion dollar anti-virus industry.

The 2005 forum thread that was mentioned before is here:

http://forums.cnet.com/do-antivirus-software-developers-create-viruses/7723-7810_102-116606.html

If you can step over the corporate shills and disinformationalists in that thread, there is some useful analysis that percolates out of the hubbub... I like this comment..

Do you really think that Corporate America is concerned about breaking laws or making good moral judgments?

Remember the Ford Pinto? The Ford Motor Company discovered that their Pinto's gas tank was easily ruptured in a slow rear-end collision. The company decided that it would be cheaper paying off the families when their loved ones were killed in this car than it was to pay to fix the problem.

And what about the tobacco companies that illegally boosted their cigarettes with extra nicotine so it was more addictive?

Or Pacific Gas & Electric that illegally dumped hexavalent chromium in open pits knowing that it would get into ground water causing early death and onset cancers to their own customers?

Or Enron, that faked financial reports to get more people to invest and then going out of business and keeping the money? The list goes on and on and on.

It would be very easy to spread a virus (inter)nationally with no detection. Buy a laptop, get an ISP account under a bogus name, use collected and purchased email lists to send the virus out. Destroy the laptop. Watch your sales grow.

birkee

I've just had a look at this thread out of interest, and I'm amazed at some of the ridiculous suggestions to a computer innocent.

1. Files have NOT been deleted, otherwise Windows would not have booted. (Unless attacker was targetted at specific files.)
2. She has no other computer to hand, she was using a phone for this thread.
3. She has a 'guest account' so she can't download software to run on the infected PC.
4. She does not have Linux discs, or any other operating system discs to hand.

For a newbie, the only sensible suggestion was to get someone who knows about computers to deal with it.

asbokid

birkee wrote: »

For a newbie, the only sensible suggestion was to get someone who knows about computers to deal with it.

Sounds like that's exactly what she did.

There's a lesson for us all here.. Download and burn a copy of a Linux live CD or recovery CD, and keep it safe. You never know when you might need it.

In fact, if you try Linux before you need it, you may decide to abandon Windows there and then!

http://www.ubuntu.com/

The bottom line is the anti-virus investors, so it's no real stretch to accept that in the dim corners of every virus-protection company is a team of "virus-fighters".

Like the diet drinks that make us crave food, these protector bees of the company profit margin are buzzing with ever more clever ways to keep their bosses fed.

Track the viruses back to the source? You have to be kidding! How many phisher scammers are ever caught? It's a no-brainer to hide your identity if you're smart enough to write virulent code.

The bottom line of any for-profit company is profit. There's no profit in final solutions, but only in creating new problems to forever justify a company's existence.

birkee

asbokid wrote: »

Sounds like that's exactly what she did.

There's a lesson for us all here.. Download and burn a copy of a Linux live CD or recovery CD, and keep it safe. You never know when you might need it.

In fact, if you try Linux before you need it, you may decide to abandon Windows there and then!

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Do you know.....I think I might just try that!
Haven't tried it yet. Thanks for the poke.

RussJK

birkee wrote: »

3. She has a 'guest account' so she can't download software to run on the infected PC.
For a newbie, the only sensible suggestion was to get someone who knows about computers to deal with it.

That's simply not true Birkee.

I just activated a guest account and had no problems downloading software, installing it, and running a scan. I was just asked to type in the administrator password.

Secondly, she was only on a guest account because she was frightened by the fake error messages - but people are still often able to download and run Malwarebytes even from the infected Administrator account. We advise people on this kind of malware all the time!

JasX

asbokid wrote: »

There's a lesson for us all here.. Download and burn a copy of a Linux live CD or recovery CD, and keep it safe. You never know when you might need it.

Meh, I find keeping a spare desktop at the back of a cupboard does me fine for emergencies..... fired up tested from time to time ofc

Lil306

RussJK wrote: »

(Just so you know, Piriform Recuva isn't a backup utility so unfortunately it wouldn't have helped make a copy of her daughter's work. You can read up on what it does here if you'd like to know the circumstances in which it'd be useful.)

Quite right, it's a file recovery tool. A very good one aswell

Will need to see if this post is actually required since the OP hasn't replied for some time.

RussJK

asbokid wrote: »

There's a lesson for us all here.. Download and burn a copy of a Linux live CD or recovery CD, and keep it safe. You never know when you might need it.

For sure, I think if people don't have at least a few Antivirus rescue discs, system recovery discs, and Linux LiveCDs of some sort then they really should.

There's a good selection of Antivirus rescue disks here, and a few miscellaneous suggestions for other recovery disks at the bottom:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/41653210#Comment_41653210

The Sardu website links to most of the good ones boot disks you can make, and it lets you combine them all for a super bootdisk:
http://www.sarducd.it/

Super OS is the best Ubuntu LiveDVD to have IMO, as it comes with full multimedia support right out of the box:
http://hacktolive.org/wiki/Super_OS