I wrote a previous post about paying me now to help you prepare for a disaster, or paying me later when the disaster hits.
Over the past week I have encountered the System Security 2009 malware/spyware program on 3 systems at 3 different clients. This rouge software is downloaded to your computer either through a web page or an email.
I was able to recover all three computers – one by removing the spyware, another by reformatting the system and the third by installing a new hard drive and recovering the data from the infected hard drive.
The main thrust of this program is to trick the user into thinking that her computer is infected with spyware when it really isn’t. The software presents itself as a virus/spyware scanner and tells the user that the system is infected with so many different viruses. The software give you 2 options to exit though no matter what you click, the virus loads itself onto your system and you are infected.
If you ever visit a webpage and it tells you that you are infected the best thing to do is just stop what you are doing and if possible just turn off your computer. At this point your system has not been infected and you should be able to resume working after the restart.
If you know a how to end a task using the task manager program you can just end your internet session and you should be safe.
The frustrating thing for me is that none of these infections was the fault of the user. Each user just happened to go to the wrong site, and as far as I can tell, they were not bad sites.