oregonnerd: differing views

Security Error 6000 (XP and Vista), Security Error 9000 (Vista)

January 9, 2009 at 11:34 am Leave a comment

I’m still working on these, but a preliminary sweep looks like the culprit is probably a variant of a fairly old Trojan sort of maneuver; Backdoor.Agent.B…which installs a *.dll file.  It could have been anywhere.  CNET has been hit; so have ZDNet and PCWorld; this isn’t something that affects just the idiots who visit “that kind” of site.  This is the click-jacking I’ve been talking about.  A link from a popular online publication like eWeek can be manipulated.

Originally this was an XP-only version, which is understandable; the bulletin I’m looking at is February of 2007; it’s an advisory from Symantec (Norton).  On the Vista computer I may finally choose to (once again*) just wipe and reinstall.  At this point I haven’t gotten the CD’s (assuming there are some, I’m going to have to ask, and the Reyes family has less than perfect English; I’ll also do my research on the HP Pavilion model and see what should have been there if I can.  Some of the computers put out in the days of 160-gig hard drives had the “recovery” discs on the hard drive, which was unfortunate in the case of a hard drive crash or for that matter in the case of a good virus.

Rose has a current copy of Norton 360.  I tried running their removal tool.  “Administrative Options” on the XP machine in Safe Mode just looped.  It’s never been activated.  I don’t think the computer has ever been registered.  As I said, particularly on this XP machine which has visited a number of sites (unpatched; it was SP1 a week ago), I’d rather just start from scratch.  That also will recover some space from some *.jpg files I saw listed on a Threatfire scan.

I had to uninstall Zone Alarm to install Norton 360, and I simply lack patience today.  So I’ll play a game, and then go back to installing a bloody program.  I’m trying to wait until the XP machine is done with its Threatfire scan.

–Glenn

*It’s been my habit with Windows for just a little while.  Not that I’m trying to say all versions haven’t always worked perfectly.  I’m sure they have.  User error and all that.

Entry filed under: browsers, computers/tech, how to, internet, internet security.