I've been hacked

[Fit of Rage]

First off, I would like to ask that anyone with out a serious reply simply not reply at all. This is not a joke in the slightest, and any positive input will be deeply appreciated.

This afternoon, I was internet browing and after closing a few windows, some IE window about spyware came up (advertising anti-spyware software or something) and I closed that. I reopened IE, and to my dismay, I received a blue screen which was C:\WINDOWS\secure.html This page gave me three links to a site containing anti-spyware/virus/spam software, and was made to look like it was designed professionally by windows. It stated that my system had been taken over by a foreign device and that control would no longer be availible. It displayed my IP, my ISP, email addresses etc.

The problem lies deeper. That blue page set itself as my home page, and any time I attempt to reset it to yahoo or anything else, it refuses to apply. I also went into add/remove programs from control panel, and when I tried to do that, it would open the window for a fraction of a second, and close. I found a way to circumvent this through some other option, so I am able to add/remove programs, but still my system should not be operating this way.

PLEASE HELP! This is not a joke and my household is going absolutely crazy because of it. Thanks a million.

[Fit of Rage]

Just a note: I already ran Adaware 6.0 and Spybot Search and Destroy 1.3 beta, and deleted many of the recent downloads I've made. Any other suggestions? I really do not want to revert to reformatting my HD and reinstalling my whole system.

[Malladrin]

Check what processes you got running (programs) close those that seem fishy and see if the page is still reset as homepage. Maybe you can figure out what program is doing it this way.

[Stabwound]

It's not hacking. It's probably some kind of spyware or a program that is doing this. My sister had a similar thing on her computer. It's usually an exploit thing in IE that's just a trick to get you to buy someone's crappy anti-virus or anti-spyware software.

You should probably try running a virus scan with a nice and updated sig file.

[Force of Nature]

I'm assuming it only hyjacks your homepage. So, make sure you download and install all the Windows security patches from Windows Update - Download Patch thingy. Then run Ad-aware or other spyware removal program.

[wadi]

Go the whole hog and get some anti-virus software too.

[cundor]

Spybot Search & Destroy

[Blood]

update your windows a lot and run a virus scan

[Jerome Scuggs]

what the fuck why arent you playing continuum

anyways, my honest opinion of this, screw IE, get opera or firefox.

Opera is designed for the serious websurfer (has cool things like tabbed browsing, and mouse gestures - ie, clicking in certain ways makes pages reload, go back, forward, etc - seems hard, but you get so used to it you start using gestures unconsciously :P) It has customizable menus (like for me, i removed forward/backward arrows cause i use the mouse to click) and a side menu with Customizable menues (mine has my email, bookmarks, links, download progress bars, and a little pad for jotting notes in [very useful])


Firefox is more fancy, with addons like games and news aggregators. But it uses the mozilla (ie netscape) html standards, so some pages might be diff looking (in my surfing, ive found no differences)

I use opera, mainly because it has built in email application thats hot, and cool skins. Also, a built in seamless popup blocker (closes unwanted popups - dont even see them.)

Also, spyware usually doesnt target those two browsers.

The only problem i really see is your family might take some getting used to - but my family adjusted in 2 days. They like firefox alot because it has tetris :P

[Creature]

Update your windows, go download Mozilla for the mean time. If all else fails, a handy windows recovery reset works real well. Try fixing stuff in safe mode also.

[Zeta-burn]

HA HA serves you right shitface.

[Fallen Angel]

Run HijackThis and post the log here.
The log usually contains all the info you need to fix a problem of this kind.

[Ewan]

Try asking here it is full of helpful and knowledgable people and has helped sort many of my computer problems.

~Ewan

[Bob (SRB)]

haha fit, the exact same thing happened to me. Except it was worse.. My fucking retarded stepbrother decided to surf the web one day. The next day i get back theres some porno program installed on my computer. I delete it and go on normally. Suddenly i start getting a whole bunch of virus alerts. Everything is still going normal though. The next day i get on, there are more virus alerts. I already have 4 different viruses now. The real problem comes when i go on the internet. The same page comes up and says something like "your computer has been accessed by a remote terminal." Then a sudden barrage of porno webpages start coming, one after another. I have at least 20 pages open, im trying to close them, but half of them freeze. Then every single time i open up task manager, it automatically shuts down after 1 second and i cant close anything. I start getting all these warnings like "vital program system.exe has generated errors and will be shut down" or something like that. Well i somehow managed to get rid of all the popups, but the next time i go on the internet, the exact same thing happens. And then i cant open ANYTHING, because it says "your computer does not have enough memory to perform this action" I tried to get rid of the viruses, it didnt work. I tried to reformat my whole c drive, that didnt work also. So i took my computer in, and they wiped it completely clean. And now with every waking moment i try to prevent that moron stepbrother of mine from touching the computer.

[Fit of Rage]

I found the problem in the registry and cleared it. Thanks to everyone who replied, minus Zeta-shitface who clearly did not read my note about serious replies only.

Thanks guys!