For those who don’t know, Bits & Pieces was hijacked and anyone coming to the site was re-directed to a scam site where the were told they had a virus and were told to download software to fix the virus. What was in that file is unknown to me. But from what I understand they didn’t get any virus from B&P.
After I was redirected to the site and went back to B&P things seemed almost normal on my end. The dashboard where I manage the site looked different, but I was able to create posts as usual.
Somehow someone was able to penetrate the server and corrupt my files. We had to delete all the files and start all over with a new install. I can now recreate the basic site design. We’re working on trying to resurrect the previous content, but there is no guarantee that it can be saved.
Wow…you’re in good hands with Maffu. Somebody owes him a cold one and you too. And man, that Jeff Tigner was sure a warm fuzzy ball of encouragement during this crisis! Maybe while you’re rebuilding you could install a door that can hit him in the arse on the way out.
Take your time, backup, and wear protection. We’ll all still be here when it’s over…minus one I guess.
WOW! I notice this until now. The good thing is that the site is up and running again. Thank You for your hard work Jonco!
I was a victim of that hijacking. Among other things, it disabled my task manager. A small message kept flashing that said that this virus was probably caused of visiting porn sites and warez/torrent sites. This computer has never visited anything that falls into those categories but I still didn’t know what caused it until Jon just explained. I don’t know if my AV software finally got everything under control but my computer automatically shut down after about an hour. I turned it back on and there were now three porn links on my desktop. I deleted them and emptied the recycle bin. I’ve spent both Thurs. and Fri. night cleaning my system and today I ran a malware program (took five hours), a trojan and worm scan and now McAfee is finishing up it’s scan. One more trojan was found and quarantined.
I hope I’ve done everything to clean my system. Jon, or anyone, if you have any suggestions of what I can do to make sure I’ve removed all the crap, please advise.
Man, I missed Bits & Pieces! I’m so glad you’re fixed now . . . or at least that Bits & Pieces is!
And screw that m#%#$^%f*ck#r that messed with MY Bits & Pieces!
Love, peace & hugs,
Elizabeth : )
Austin, TX
Glad to have you back Jon, as someone else suggested I’ll buy you a couple beers once the link is back up. But do share them with Maffu!!
nice to have you back
Jonco — if you need any help securing your site, feel free to email me. I’ve worked in the hosting industry for quite some time at a larger host (it’s in my info). I’ve visited this site for years, I’ll gladly be of assistance.
Vegaslady — There is a handful of free and pay utilities that are very good at cleaning computers. In your case, you should probably try spyware/malware removers along with antivirus.
I’d highly recommend Spybot: Search and Destroy for a freeware malware/spyware scanner, and AVG or Antivir for virus scanning. Since you mentioned McAfee, take care if you want to try another antivirus program, they rarely play well together.
Also, be extremely careful googling for software solutions. There are quite a few out there that are disguised as legitimate solutions, and also take care of _where_ you download legitimate software from — In many cases “real” software can contain a virus itself if you don’t verify the source!
For the ones I mentioned, these are the real sources: free.avg.com for AVG, avira.com for AntiVir, and safer-networking.org for SpyBot.
Garret, ty for your advice. I suspected for a long time that so-called fixes contain a virus and/or lots of spyware so I try to be very careful.
I suspected I was still having problems so I started looking for free trojan and worm removal software. Most of those mentioned offered a 30-day free trial and generally identified any trojans/worms for free but you had to pay a king’s ransom for the program to remove the problems. I found Loaris and decided to dive in and try it. I hope it’s really the blessing it seems to be. It freed up my hijacked task manager, found quite a few things I didn’t know I had and a few things I did know of but hadn’t been able to remove. I know that competing AV programs can create an unholy war but, so far, Loaris and McAfee seem to be on a friendly basis. Do you know anything about Loaris?
Again, Garret, ty.