The Worst Computer Virus AttackWritten by Abdulrehman on September 10th, 2008
What I recently experienced on my computer was a proper computer virus attack. Despite the fact that I was the one who got its base of 500 MB on my computer, but little had I known something like this could happen. If you’re Torrent addicted like me, then I can only say one thing better be very very careful while choosing a torrent to download and when someone says something like it is unreliable and the torrent gets deleted from the database, then they really mean it. I thought they were just saying that because of copyright claims.
What happened to my computer could be expected if I had known that the whole thing was a big fat virus. I searched up a torrent for one of the soviftwares I wanted really bad. A very recent torrent with a lot of seeders, just what I was looking for and it was approximately 570 MB. Once it was downloaded, I didn’t get the time to install it instantly so after 2 days, I went back to it’s torrent page to look for it’s key and the torrent website displayed “Torrent deleted”, I thought that was because of copyright problems and continued to the setup.
I had recently deleted the Trial version of Anti-virus guard from my computer and now tried to install kaspersky which was giving me key problems, so I was unprotected in terms of an anti-virus. As I tried to install the software I had downloaded, I got an error. I felt a bit fishy about that but then I saw a folder which said setup, I double-clicked that and there was this file of about 40 MB which said setup and looked just like it, I opened it and nothing happened. Acting impatient as I am, I tried to open it again and then I saw this Command Prompt window which said ‘Copying file 1 of 1′. I closed the window and saw all of my desktop files being deleted and new files being added to the desktop. I tried to open Task Manager, but it said “Task Manager has been disabled by the administrator”. Although I am the administrator on the computer. I felt freaky about that, but now there was no way to get to My Computer and once I got there, Drive C and D were hidden.
So overall, Task manager was disabled. Desktop was deleted, drives were hidden as well as My computer. Browsing could not be done, and there was kind of a complete ban on downloading. There was no way to open Run or to Log off. The computer wasn’t detecting a USB either. The wallpaper was changed to an image which said ‘Your privacy is in Danger’. Out of nowhere this website was popping in and out asking me to download their anti-virus, when I tried to do that my computer restarted automatically. Its base file were write-protected by now.
It was more like a free country being taken over by a whole army of outlaws and goon masterminds. Some knowledge that I had of these things of an operating system, I managed to enable the task manager in the safe mode using group policy. But that was it, I knew nothing more about it, I couldn’t get an anti-virus without which there was no way to get the virus out, I was just left to one choice. Format the whole computer and say good-bye to all the good stuff I had in there.
I lost all of the important things on my computer, and learned a lesson for once. Never download a bad torrent. But how do you know if it is a bad torrent? Now you can check my post about finding the best torrent although the points below are important:
- Only download torrents which are at least 1-2 days old.
- Read their comments and take them seriously.
- Make sure you have a good anti-virus
- If you feel fishy about the whole thing , then ask an expert before proceeding on the whole thing.
- Viruses are usually in the disguise in torrents of softwares.
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What I recently experienced on my computer was a proper computer virus attack. Despite the fact that I was the one who got its base of 500 MB on my computer, but little had I known something like this could happen. If you’re Torrent addicted like me, then I can only say one thing better be very very careful while choosing a torrent to download and when someone says something like it is unreliable and the torrent gets deleted from the database, then they really mean it. I thought they were just saying that because of copyright claims.
What happened to my computer could be expected if I had known that the whole thing was a big fat virus. I searched up a torrent for one of the soviftwares I wanted really bad. A very recent torrent with a lot of seeders, just what I was looking for and it was approximately 570 MB. Once it was downloaded, I didn’t get the time to install it instantly so after 2 days, I went back to it’s torrent page to look for it’s key and the torrent website displayed “Torrent deleted”, I thought that was because of copyright problems and continued to the setup.
I had recently deleted the Trial version of Anti-virus guard from my computer and now tried to install kaspersky which was giving me key problems, so I was unprotected in terms of an anti-virus. As I tried to install the software I had downloaded, I got an error. I felt a bit fishy about that but then I saw a folder which said setup, I double-clicked that and there was this file of about 40 MB which said setup and looked just like it, I opened it and nothing happened. Acting impatient as I am, I tried to open it again and then I saw this Command Prompt window which said ‘Copying file 1 of 1′. I closed the window and saw all of my desktop files being deleted and new files being added to the desktop. I tried to open Task Manager, but it said “Task Manager has been disabled by the administrator”. Although I am the administrator on the computer. I felt freaky about that, but now there was no way to get to My Computer and once I got there, Drive C and D were hidden.
So overall, Task manager was disabled. Desktop was deleted, drives were hidden as well as My computer. Browsing could not be done, and there was kind of a complete ban on downloading. There was no way to open Run or to Log off. The computer wasn’t detecting a USB either. The wallpaper was changed to an image which said ‘Your privacy is in Danger’. Out of nowhere this website was popping in and out asking me to download their anti-virus, when I tried to do that my computer restarted automatically. Its base file were write-protected by now.
It was more like a free country being taken over by a whole army of outlaws and goon masterminds. Some knowledge that I had of these things of an operating system, I managed to enable the task manager in the safe mode using group policy. But that was it, I knew nothing more about it, I couldn’t get an anti-virus without which there was no way to get the virus out, I was just left to one choice. Format the whole computer and say good-bye to all the good stuff I had in there.
I lost all of the important things on my computer, and learned a lesson for once. Never download a bad torrent. But how do you know if it is a bad torrent? Now you can check my post about finding the best torrent although the points below are important:
- Only download torrents which are at least 1-2 days old.
- Read their comments and take them seriously.
- Make sure you have a good anti-virus
- If you feel fishy about the whole thing , then ask an expert before proceeding on the whole thing.
- Viruses are usually in the disguise in torrents of softwares.
I am Abdulrehman Agha, the guy behind 3arn.Net. I am 16 years old, study in grade 10 and live in Pakistan. I started this blog in the hope of making money on the internet, sharing my computer experiences and proving that despite many barriers, one can make money on the internet.
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Thanks for sharing your harrowing experience.
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Bad torrent experience. Thanks for the tips. I encounter virused torrents once in a while, but my antivirus+firewall which gets updates regularly is a good thing that I have in my PC. I think a personal firewall is now a must-have. Simply having an antivirus running is not enough.
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Thanks for the tips. My sis is constantly downloading stuff using torrent, so I’ll definitely tell her to be extra careful nowadays.
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You’re pretty stupid for d/ling anything without a form of virus protection. I learned my lesson when I was probably 17 back when “sharing” came in the form of FTPs or BBS postings. For the record, not everything free is good for you and a lot of groups who crack and create trainers will every once and a while take a swipe at you. It’s nothing personal, I just consider it their version of Internet Natural Selection; only the intelligent or at least savvy will survive.
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[...] The Worst Computer Virus Attack [...]
The best advice would be don’t download anything from torrent sites. Most of them are pretty loaded with viruses. May I suggest there are other ways to get the software such as paying for it. Or consider using freeware such as Avira for antivirues, adaware for spyware and so on.
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hey thanks.
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There is a very simple way to prevent this:
use linux!
no viruses, no malware, no fuss ^^
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Sucks to hear you had such a bad torrent experience, but you learned a very valuable lesson about not just downloading torrents, but downloading anything in general. Unless you are running a linux distro your always at risk, even if you’ve got the best anti virus software. The only way to really protect yourself is to always be suspicious of anything you download. 90% of viruses are hidden in .exe files so the best way to protect yourself if your downloading a program is to only download from trusted sources, or torrents that are few days old and always read the comments. If your suspicious at all your best bet is to not download it, or find a different source.
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You could have also booted from Knoppix or similar, mounted your windows disks, and deleted the files manually.
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….Zactley why i dont use this torrent sH!7…..
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[...] The Worst Computer Virus Attack [...]
You can use take your harddisk, and bring it to another AV protected computer to scan and remove all the viruses. This usually works well
For my laptop, I maintain a dual boot system, Windows XP and Windows XP x64. The x64 is pretty much more virus resistant, so if your Windows XP is infected, boot to the x64 and then clean them up! Or use Linux on your secondary partition.
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I really liked your blog!
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I maintain my computer very much but virus do come. I think there should be way to remove it permanantly.
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best thing to use it a virtual machine where you can test the software before actually installing it on your PC. Vmware is what I use to first test if the software is legit. I clone the virtual pc and use one of them. If it damages the clone then I’ll know is evil. Perhaps I have antivirus on those virtual machines to detect viruses.
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Really I don’t want to be in your situation. I have two antivirus internet security package in my computer and still many time time I feel unsafe downloading any torrent file. I always download torrent file only from reputable torrent uploader with more comments. Thanks for your suggestions and sorry for your data loss.
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