MySpace Warning

[wbassett]

My wife recently wanted to setup a MySpace account to share pictures of the family and kids with relatives that also have a MySpace account.

She made the account 'private' since there are undesirable people that stalk MySpace, but that wasn't the problem we encountered.

She found all these 'cool' sites with MySpace addons like videos and graphics and things like that. She proceeded to crash her computer and ultimately I had to do a total reformat and reinstall of everything.

The second of our four networked computers wasn't so fortunate... She started using another PC while I was reformatting hers and ended up with a ton of Spyware AND viruses from these sites with all those 'cute' MySpace animated gifs and videos. This PC wasn't so lucky to get by with a simple reformat, it trashed the hard drive!

I tried repartitioning it, and even a low level format and the drive is gone.

Then she asked if she could check her site out on MY computer! I asked her if she was nuts!

So if you have anyone interested in MySpace, whether it's your kids or spouse, be very careful. Even with the most current Spyware and Virus software it trashed two of my computers.

[Mike P.]

Thanks for the heads up. What anti virus program are you using?

[bob1029]

As for the other computers being "trashed", if you actually did a zero-fill from mbr to end of drive, then there would be nothing on the drive that could affect a clean windows installation. It is definately a hardware issue if you wipe the drive in this manner and then proceed to have issues reinstalling the original windows software.

Things to realize: Your program files are lost. Your windows installation is lost. Everything else should be ok, as long as the virus doesnt target and corrupt documents. Document files can never "re-infect" your computer by simply copying them over, as they can contain no virus code or be capable of execution with a .doc,.xls,.jpg,etc extension. The extensions we are concerned about are: .exe,.vbs,.com,.js

My remedy for handling 100% of virus issues:

1. Take hard drive out of infected computer, connect as slave drive to second computer and DISABLE AUTORUN. If autorun is enabled, there could be an autorun.inf file in the root that calls a virus executable to run. Much like if you insert a cd in the computer and it automatically runs the setup wizard.

2. Pull off your important documents folders. These are typically located in c:\documents and settings\<username>. Run a search on all the files you have removed (search hidden files and folders as well) for *.exe;*.com;*.js;*.lnk. This will show you a list of all executable files in your documents. Delete these.

3. Download the ISO image file of derrick's boot and nuke, and burn it to a cd using your favorite software. Replace the hard drive in the computer it was removed from, and boot off the cd. There is an option in the software to do a basic zero-fill, so select it and run the wipe.

4. Reinstall windows normally. If at this point you find that there is STILL a virus on your hard drive, I will buy you lunch.

[wbassett]

bob1029 wrote:

As for the other computers being "trashed", if you actually did a zero-fill from mbr to end of drive, then there would be nothing on the drive that could affect a clean windows installation. It is definately a hardware issue if you wipe the drive in this manner and then proceed to have issues reinstalling the original windows software.

No the drive is toast. You're right, it is a hardware issue. What happened was she was surfing around for those 'cute' little pictures and background stuff and the virus software started going nuts, popping up with multiple virus alerts. Here's what killed it... the system locked up and she reached over and powered the PC off and then back on. Windows system files got corrupted so I figured just wipe it and reinstall... nothing really important on that system anyway it's the one I'm setting up as a MAME console.

The power off and back on must have crashed the heads. Shouldn't have, but the drive is toast. Looking at things from a positive perspective... it was only a 30GB drive so now I have an excuse to buy a 320GB replacement drive!

[wbassett]

Mike P. wrote:

Thanks for the heads up. What anti virus program are you using?

AVG with the latest updates.

[Sonnie]

This is quite strange... I know a host of folks that use MySpace very extensively and very successfully. I guess it's like anything else though, you have to be careful when fooling with anything on the Internet.

[Exocer]

Myspace has gotten virus infested over the past year... It actually used to be a decent place to meet/ keep in touch with people when it originally came out.

[Sonnie]

It could end up ruining their reputation if they don't figure out a way to provide users with protection.

[Mike P.]

wbassett wrote:

AVG with the latest updates.

I have a laptop with AVG. Recently after logging on to My Space my laptop started acting strange. Now when I surf the net, the font size will change to so small I can barely read it, but not on all webpages. I've tried everything but can't find the problem. Looks like a reformat is in order. My desktop has Norton anti virus and is working fine. I'm guessing It's a better program for stopping these kind of attacks.

[Danny]

I would suggest that the problem is not with myspace but with the addons (HTML code I guess). On my page I only use HTML from the my gen profile editor and You Tube. I've never had any problems

[wbassett]

Danny wrote:

I would suggest that the problem is not with myspace but with the addons (HTML code I guess). On my page I only use HTML from the my gen profile editor and You Tube. I've never had any problems

That is exactly correct. It's the third party sites that allow anyone to upload images and HTML.

So even though this problem isn't MySpace itself, it is something that affects MySpace users and new members or over zealous MySpace members (such as my wife) can run into some potential problems.

I'm a network engineer by trade and work with webservers, application servers, network hardware and such so I'd like to think I'm not a novice with computers and as I mentioned in the opening post she took down two of our four computers!

I'll get the name of the site(s) in question where she picked up the spyware and viruses and post that so people know to tell their family to avoid those sites.

AVG is a very good virus scan program and it actually did catch the viruses as they came in, you should have seen the one system though. Virus alerts were popping up as fast as she could click the warning. There were just so many that the system locked up.

Both computers are older systems, an the one that crashed hard is an AMD Thunderbird system with a ****** PChips motherboard. The drive is also a couple years old and like I said I suspect the heads didn't auto park and crashed when she hit the power button.

I'll get the name of the site so people know which ones to steer clear of.

[Wayde]

I guess the answer is to just use facebook MySpace is reputed to be for hooligans.

[toecheese]

wbassett wrote:

My wife recently wanted to setup a MySpace account to share pictures of the family and kids with relatives that also have a MySpace account.

She made the account 'private' since there are undesirable people that stalk MySpace, but that wasn't the problem we encountered.

She found all these 'cool' sites with MySpace addons like videos and graphics and things like that. She proceeded to crash her computer and ultimately I had to do a total reformat and reinstall of everything.

The second of our four networked computers wasn't so fortunate... She started using another PC while I was reformatting hers and ended up with a ton of Spyware AND viruses from these sites with all those 'cute' MySpace animated gifs and videos. This PC wasn't so lucky to get by with a simple reformat, it trashed the hard drive!

I tried repartitioning it, and even a low level format and the drive is gone.

Then she asked if she could check her site out on MY computer! I asked her if she was nuts!

So if you have anyone interested in MySpace, whether it's your kids or spouse, be very careful. Even with the most current Spyware and Virus software it trashed two of my computers.

A couple of hints to keep the spyware away.

Use Firefox- it has excellent anti-spyware, anti-phishing built in.

Use the 'system restore' feature of Windows for everything you install. If you download it, don't like it, immediately do a system restore.