Places malware hides, update #2: search engine redirection

I’m happy to report that I just stumbled across a bit of information that fixes a serious flaw/oversight in my malware removal how-to guide, and sheds a great deal of light on the inner workings of one of the more obnoxious families of malware currently slithering around on the Internet. For those of you who [...]

Places malware hides, update #1

I had the great honor of becoming acquainted with yet another malicious “anti-malware” program this evening, and in the process, I discovered yet another place where these bugs can hide their files.  Actually, the cloaking tactics used by particular scourge were some of the most fiendishly clever I’ve ever seen.  First off, the malware piggybacked [...]

Generic instructions for manually removing common types of malware (viruses, trojans, even some rootkits)

This post is really an addendum to one I wrote a month ago on removing a specific family of malware.  Since then, I’ve discovered (through some exceedingly fun four hours of “research”) that the method I outlined in that post is applicable to a much wider range of malware infections than I originally thought.  Consequently, [...]

How to remove the family of rouge anti-malware programs with names similar to “Antivirus 2008 XP” (Update: works on a wide variety of other types of malware as well)

Update: I recently discovered that many bugs that aren’t part of this family nevertheless function (and, consequently, can be killed) in exactly the same manner. Thus, unless I’m very much mistaken, these instructions can be generalized to a wide range of infections. So whenever I refer to “this family of bugs,” know that what I’m [...]