SCKeylogger found - what is next?

[nuts]

one thing that can be useful is the virtual keyboard built into xp, (accessories menu), this prevents driver based keyloggers from grabbing your password.

[Lawman]

Perhaps I should be more careful. Although I have an encrypted, firewalled router and use Norton internet security (software firewall and AV) as well as SB S&D, I have been known to surf, how can I put it, sites of an adult nature (ahem!) on the PC that I access my bank, neteller and stock portfolios on. Must have been lucky so far...

[nuts]

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Perhaps I should be more careful. Although I have an encrypted, firewalled router and use Norton internet security (software firewall and AV) as well as SB S&D, I have been known to surf, how can I put it, sites of an adult nature (ahem!) on the PC that I access my bank, neteller and stock portfolios on. Must have been lucky so far...

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as for your encryption, you should not use WEP, WPA is the minimum effective security setting. Search google for more info on wep if needed.

[LeapFrog]

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Perhaps I should be more careful. Although I have an encrypted, firewalled router and use Norton internet security (software firewall and AV) as well as SB S&D, I have been known to surf, how can I put it, sites of an adult nature (ahem!) on the PC that I access my bank, neteller and stock portfolios on. Must have been lucky so far...

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Pr0n sites are a great way to pickup junk if your security isn't up to date. I would recommend using FireFox with the noscript addon and also blocking cookies if your going to be doing any sketchy web surfing. For the true pr0n connoisseur your going to want to be using a separate machine or only websurfing from inside a virtual machine instance (see VMWare) -- when you are done surfing you simply end the VM instance and don't save any changes. Even if you picked up a logger(or whatever) its gone the next time you fire up the VM.

Edited to add: Also many people do routine daily activities on accounts with administrator access. Its a good idea to create a user with limited access and spend most of your time on this account. In XP just go to control panel/user accounts

[LeapFrog]

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I would only add one thing: I have a DVDburner on my comp and I created a 'reformat' disk. It contains all necessary applications as well as their patches


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This is a great idea, thanks for throwing it out. I have a flashdrive that I use for this purpose but ultimately a DVD or CD is safer. Supposedly a USB drive can be infected if plugged into an infected computer that has auto play on (default).

Re your other post

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I don't think I am qualified to answer this, but I think it depends. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will intervene....


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Based on your well thought out post I think you are [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I'm certainly no security expert but I chime in. We have many intelligent and knowledgeable people on 2+2, any mistake or misinformation is probably going to be corrected at some point. My view is its definitely +EV to throw things out there, even if not always 100% correct. New ideas and viewpoints will if nothing else spur discussion and as a community we can try and find the best solution.

[Ricks]

90% of these key loggers use a keyboard hook. Using a program such as SnoopFree would prevent many of these problems. SnoopFree may not be of any help if the logger is rootkit based. RootkitRevealer by Sysinternals would often detect this, especially by using an off-line scan.

These programs are easily found and are free.

[mrHysteria]

i do network and computer security for a living, and i think above all the absolute most important thing you could have is a top-of-the-line anti-virus scanner. if you are worried about keyboard loggers and the like, anti-virus is so much more important than spybot, adaware, etc.

AVG and others are ok but go and spend the money to buy mcafee or norton. make sure they are set to automatically update (which they should be out of the box). scan and continue to re-scan until there are no items flagged.

but there are definitely some great ideas in this thread. among them, enable heuristic scanning in your anti-virus, separate the play pc from financials, and using virtual machines to do your dirty work. i think having a router such as a linksys is also a great way to protect your pc, and also using regular user accounts instead of administrator will help keep undesirable software out.

all of that said, paranoia abounds. if i found a keystroke logger on my pc, i would still probably backup, format, and rebuild just to be safe.