07-26-2015, 07:27 AM
(07-26-2015, 06:46 AM)Surge Wrote:(07-26-2015, 06:40 AM)Calabrese Wrote: We've all been there, done that. Just pray you caught all the nasties before they digged in, and still, it's a good time to check you have a safe backup of all your stuff... because if something actualy ugly dug in, your best bet is to format the fuck out of your hard drive.....I have been using fucking pirate installers for months and haven't gotten anything....I feel lucky.
Protip: Never. EVER. Use a downloader. Try not to even use the official ones for software; if at all possible, always download the "full"/"offline" installer versions, the ones that weigh a bit more than a couple KB. Installers and downloaders are fucking evil.
Ironically enough, pirate installers and cracks are usually the least malicious, though I have seen a few ones that were certainly dirty. After a while you learn to recognize the fishy smell no matter where the software cam from.
(07-26-2015, 06:50 AM)Shaadaris Wrote: Yeah, I know... I was put off guard by the site being so popular though.
Do you think a full system scan with Avast would be able to root out everything? (assuming there is more, though judging by the quality of the things it blocked, there wouldn't be anything too serious... hopefully.) I hope so because there's no way I can back up everything on this computer in any reasonable amount of time... Not to mention I don't have the right software to unlock my external hard drive on this comp so I can't right now in the first place.
Yeah, popularity isn't really any indication. Cnet is really popular, or used to be, and I got tired of their installers coming with adware and malware... at one point I thought "this can't be for real, so much crap from a big site? Maybe it's a false positive?"
No, it wasn't.
And I wouldn't trust even a full scan with avast or MalwareBytes to root out absolutely everything once it's in. Admittedly, I'm a bit paranoid, but I know from experience the worst malware often messes with antivirus and antimalware software itself. In the old days it was pretty dumb, it was readily evident your antivirus had suddenly stopped working, but I don't think nowadays people are so obvious. The only perfect defense is preventing that kind of thing from getting installed in the first place... and you know not everyone is 100% safe, so.
In any case, this is just from my own experience, I'm not the most knowledgeable person around, just an old tinkery user. Do run those full scans just in case, and keep an eye out for weird things like lots of files missing or being moved, spontaneous restarts, that kind of thing.