Thursday, December 26, 2013

Rootkit.bout.cidox.b

Nasty virus.  Lovable daughter, who is up for Christmas, was web surfing on my machine. One website she surfed thru infected my trusty Compaq 1750 NX
.  It's nasty.  It slows down the boot, slows down loading programs, slows down the internet, freezes the mouse, and crashes the whole machine erratically. 
   It's a rootkit, which means it hacks out a piece of hard disk to live on that is not part of the Windows file system.  This means that Windows, and Windows tools like Explorer cannot even see it on disk, even if you knew where to look. 
   I tried Anti Malware Bytes (that crashed before it finished) Spybot Search and Destroy, Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool,  and Regclean without any luck.  But Kaspersky's TDSSKiller nailed it, or at least crippled it a lot.  Trusty Compaq is now running mostly normal, although there are moments of sluggishness that make me think the damn thing is still active. 
   Damn Microsoft for making Windows so vulnerable.  Damn virus writers.  Writing a virus ought to be a felony punishable by stoning to death in the public square.
  

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