Infected by a trojan and dealing with it

[gfkostas]

I recently got infected by a trojan after stupidly clicking on a .exe file. As it happened my AVG antivirus didn't detect the trojan and because of it i suffered substantial psychological and financial damages as the idiot had full access to my pc.

I have now formatted my C drive and have checked with novirusthanks.org all the processes that run, installed Kaspersky 2011 etc. It all appears to be clean now however as I have only formated my windows drive am concerned that my other 2 internal hard drives might have the server version of the trojan still on them and allow the hacker further access/keylogging. I am not 100% sure how these trojans work.

How do I make sure my other drives aren't infected? Running an antivirus isn't a solution i would trust anymore and since those drives have tons of files its difficult to check everthing manually. Also am not sure how a trojan server file would appear. What would I look for?

Can someone advise me on possible solutions to my predicament?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Hello and welcome.
The answer is to research the specific trojan and virus you got infected with. Then, look at multiple different antivirus solutions to help as they are not all created equal. Some popular ones are Kaspersky, Avast, Avira, Symantic and Norton. You might try scanning online with HouseCall at TrendMicro. Your only other choice is to stay offline which really isn't a choice at all.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

You may have FILES that are infected, but if the OS is a fresh load it is just sitting dormant and has no way of loading. Now if you launch one of these infected files then it is possible to reinfect yourself. I would just run a good scan with a few malware/AV applications.

 

[gfkostas]

so you would maintain that after format I should be safe now? even if other hard drives are infected on purpose by him while he was on my system. Im very worried about it

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

As we've both said, you need to scan with an updated anti virus and malware software.

 

[mechBgon]

so you would maintain that after format I should be safe now? even if other hard drives are infected on purpose by him while he was on my system. Im very worried about it

I used to keep almost 10GB of malware samples on my second hard drive. Like RadiclDreamer said, if they're not being launched, then no harm no foul.

A cutting-edge "bootkit" could conceivably survive a normal disk formatting, but that's something Kaspersky 2011 would probably detect, they don't mess around at KL. Run a full system scan including rootkit detection... any detections?

 

[MadScientist]

I recently got infected by a trojan after stupidly clicking on a .exe file. As it happened my AVG antivirus didn't detect the trojan and because of it i suffered substantial psychological and financial damages as the idiot had full access to my pc.

DON'T store personal financial records on your computer.
It's amazing how many computers I fix that have bank account passwords, tax returns, and other financial records on them. There are much safer ways of storing your financial records.

 

[RebateMonger]

DON'T store personal financial records on your computer.
It's amazing how many computers I fix that have bank account passwords, tax returns, and other financial records on them. There are much safer ways of storing your financial records.

Interesting. Would you mind providing some examples?

 

[cirrrocco]

Hm even online when I type in my bank passwords.. I usually type in a extra few characters, then either delete those characters using mouse, or use delete button.. stuff like that.

so even if those assholes are monitoring my key strokes , hopefully they dont catch the mouse movement

sometimes randomly I just type in a totally incorrect password and then select it using mouse , delete it and then type in origina password.

I am not sure if the above helps thgh.

I am also interested in seeing what madscientist has to say.

 

[alkemyst]

i suffered substantial psychological and financial damages as the idiot had full access to my pc.

you looking to sue someone?

As far as your other drives the only way you could do it without AV software is duplicate what they do on a file by file basis.

 

[Homerboy]

Interesting. Would you mind providing some examples?

Yeah I'd be interested too.
I mean I run Quicken for my home and my wife's small business tracking needs. Along with TurboTax files (several years worth) etc etc.

 

[PolishBomber]

gfkostas,
As others have said, if you formatted/reinstalled windows on your C: drive you should be all set. Once you have an operating system that you know is CLEAN, then you can do a full scan of those other drives just to be safe. Any updated antivirus should be fine - free microsoft security essentials or malicious software removal tool would do. Or Kapersky as you said you have. The key is knowing that you are doing the scan from a CLEAN install of Windows.

For data security, one very easy thing to do would be to store financial files on a USB drive or DVD+RW, instead of an internal hard disk.

The best way to do online banking SAFELY (or quicken online) is to use an OS loaded from a bootable CD/DVD. For instance, ubuntu linux is great for that. Boot from CD right into a working linux desktop and surf away using the preinstalled Firefox browser. Completely safe anytime and all the time.

Oh...and quite honestly, if you *strongly* feel that someone out there is targeting you specifically, I would seriously consider buying a Mac if I were you.

 

[MadScientist]

Interesting. Would you mind providing some examples?

Any other form of storage besides your computer's hard drives.
PolishBomber gave a few examples.

I recently cleaned a co-worker's computer that had 10 years of tax returns on it. He had no hard copy records of them, dumb. He had some nasty viruses on it that wouldn't allow any av software to run. First backed up his tax returns to another drive; and then used rkill, Combofix, and finished up with MAM and HijackThis to clean it.