[dba-Tech] Compromised Internet Explorer?

John Bartow john at winhaven.net
Thu May 5 20:45:51 CDT 2005


Isn't that part of MS's court argument that IE is integral with Windows?
;o)

Yes, it is normal. You have to do some serious hacking to get rid of IE. I
believe if you do you are somewhat limited in much of your capabilities due
to a whole slew of program relying on it being there. I kind of gave up
following that whole line of thought during the big debate because I deal
with too many small clients to ever think that I could actually replace IE
in any great amount. I think I have one client using Firefox and that's
mostly because of his college intern.

You know, there was one other odd behavior I noticed. Yesterday I thought,
well, maybe IE is infected somehow. I couldn't find a way to un-install it
from the list of installed software. So I thought I'd try renaming the EXE
file. I did so; but a few seconds later the program re-appeared in the
program folder before my very eyes. It's dated sometime in August of last
year. I deleted the new copy of IE...but a few seconds later, there it
reappeared again. Is that normal?

Thanks, John.

Steve Erbach

On 5/5/05, John Bartow <john at winhaven.net> wrote:
> Steve,
> Sounds like you've run the gamut! In really bad cases (I've got two 
> sitting here now) I run multiple Spyware detectors (after the initial 
> Trend-Micro,
> MS-AS) and then manually remove the detections (if the free version 
> won't do it). Panda, CA, X-Cleaner, Norton, F-Secure, Ad-Aware, Spybot 
> S&D, Webroot, CheckPoint(Zone Alarm), Aluria. Can all be run one at a 
> time (or many at the
> same) so I just do that while I'm working on other things.
> 
> Have you booted into safe mode and tried resetting the windows update 
> settings as the administrator account? Also try the repair feature of IE.
> Turn off the software firewall and set the IE settings back to the
defaults.
> (I'm assuming you're behind a router/HW firewall.) Try running the 
> updates after that. Also try a registry optimizer on it if you have 
> one. Systemworks or Vcom, etc. or try 
> http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/default.asp if you don't.
> 
> You could also download the updates from another PC using the Windows 
> Update Catalog. I used to make CDs of all the updates once a month or 
> so and then use the CD with dial-up customers. It was kind of putsy 
> but better than waiting for dialup downloads (Thankfully most of my 
> customers have DSL now!)
> 
> Another possible issue - NAV 2005 has some major quirks about it. Up 
> until
> 2004 it was my top recommendation for home users (or NIS) but I have 
> run into many issues with it and unfortunately Symantec's answer 
> always seems to come down to "uninstall all Symantec software and 
> re-install". I would suggest uninstalling it. I suggest, if its OK 
> with your friend, that you try AVG or another free for personal use 
> AV. For home users I now recommend AVG/Sygate personal firewall and 
> MS-AS (which I don't care for but hey, its free and it works pretty good).
> 
> Anyway, there's my 2 scents...
> 
> John B.
> 
>
_______________________________________________
dba-Tech mailing list
dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com
http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech
Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com




More information about the dba-Tech mailing list