Computer Hijacked

Today ingame my friend told me he lost control over his computer and that someone controlled it and cleaned out his rs bank. Now I'm not too familiar with things like these but i told him to do a full scan for viruses and malware, but it didn't find anything, and then appearently it happened again. Then i told him to erase his latest downloads and uninstall any recently installed programs. We are still waiting to see if anything happens, i told him to forcefully shut his computer down if it gets hijacked again.

Any of you have any experiences or ideas regarding this and what to do?

last year i got a phone call from microsoft telling me they had noticed my computer was playing up and was full of viruses. i had been laggy so i believed them. they sed they could fix my computer there and then if i paid £200 so i sed ya go ahead.

ya i know im a dumb ass!! well they told me to follow these insructions with my comp and to get my credit card ready.

before i knew wat was going on they had control over my mouse and was doing all stuff on my comp, i gave them my credit card details and when i clicked enter to pay them my card was declined. i have an extra security lock on my card and it wouldnt let me pay. the guy from microsoft was getting angry with me now and told me to phone my bank to get them to accept payment. i did this lol (i cant believe it now how stupid i was) the manager from my bank asked me if this was genuine and i told him yes..... he replid that it sounded all wrong and microsoft dont phone ppl up to fix computers. this got me to start doubting wat was going on.

i told mr microsoft i didnt want it fixing any more and was not paying him, he got angry called me names and put the phone down. but he was still in control of my computer and was trying to click accept accept on my payment.

i pulled the plug on my comp, but it was full of all viruses and i had to take it the computer hospital to get it fixed. the outcome was i had to buy a new computer in the end so it cost me alot

i know this is a long story but funay ppl can get into your computer and steal your identity:(

please dont get fooled like me

In your control panel, there is an option called "remoteapp" or "remote control" by default it is turned off. If you ever turn it on then other people can control your computer like what happened with Kazzy.

If you have a service agreement with your computer: then your computer provider may want to remote in to check you computer if you logg a fault. When and if they remote in YOU MUST MAKE SURE THEY SET REMOTE TO OFF BEFORE THEY LEAVE. Otherwise your computer is left open for anyone to control it.

Del Computers do this here in Australia. It saves sending a tech to do minor fixes. Microsoft never do this. Del only does it after you logg a fault with them. No one should phone you up out of the blue and say they know what is happening with your computer.

Unless you really know what you're doing never play with "remote control."



Fearful

I hate to say it but I suggest your friend wipe the HD and reinstall the OS. Either that or pay someone (unless he/she or a willing friend knows how) to do the forensics on it and try to manually find/remove the malware. The tricky thing in my experience is that when a system is compromised that bad there are multiple problems. I wouldn't trust the system was secure unless you wiped the drive and reinstalled the OS or had a pro analyze the results of a program like combo-fix to find red flag issues.

I picked up a stealth rootkit from (most probably) a bad torrent this spring. My computer was self-booting (from completely shut down!) everyday at 15:37 and uploading my media files continuously. My webcam was also coming on by itself. Scary. Very scary. It overclocked my processor and caused thermal shut downs. It rendered the system logs unreadable. It also did permanent damage to my hard disk. Where my win7 recovery partition used to be is now empty and completely unusable. I reinstalled my OS and it puts in a new recovery partition but the old one that was deleted by the malware is still there... a ten gigabyte hole in my HD.

Fortunately nothing bad happened - no unauthorized use of credit accounts or anything serious like that (that I know of... so far *crosses fingers) but someone sure made a twisted mess of my computer. This event was what really motivated me to study computers more. The more I learn the more vulnerable I realize I have been. Just being naive and assuming that karma would always be my friend. LOL gf

This is actually an old problem that was resolved, thankfully. Still good to get more solutions and viewpoints on these kind of things, you never know when you'll catch something nasty.

On a side note it's nice to see you're already so active on the forums Steve

WOW sounds like something from a horror show! thanks guys for all the info and yep sure is scary that someone is that bored with their lives!!