Removing Burstabit Spyware? 40
Webbsurfer asks: "I recently returned home from school from winter break, and discovered a good chunk of spyware on my parent's computer. I've ran ad-aware and cleared out the obvious P2P programs, but there's one I can't seem to get rid of. It generates pop-up ads, which come from the burstabit.com domain. Any ideas who these guys are and how to get rid of their junk?"
What OS? (Score:2)
Re:What OS? (Score:5, Informative)
127.0.0.1 burstabit.com
This means that whenever the system tries to connect to burstabit.com, it'll skip the DNS lookup and connect to 127.0.0.1, which is your computer. This'll hopefully stop the spyware.
Re:What OS? (Score:1)
Browser Help Object (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Browser Help Object (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Browser Help Object (Score:1)
bhocop.zip [zdnet.com]
thor
Registry (Score:1)
Re:What burstabit.com domain? (Score:1)
Too bad... (Score:2)
Yes, might doesn't make right.. blah blah blah, but three lefts do.
HOSTS file (Score:1)
127.0.0.1 burstabit.com
Get Spybot (Score:2, Informative)
Check the registry (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The one that annoyed me (Score:3, Informative)
Tons of pop-ups, a lot of mis-redirection back to lop.com (like trying to go to google.com), and all kinds of "helper" lop.com applications. I'd love to know how to get rid of it if I ever run across it again.
Re:The one that annoyed me (Score:1)
Re:The one that annoyed me (Score:3, Informative)
Google rules. Well, usually -- they're not turning up any hits for Burstabit yet, though I'm sure this article will itself become part of their index before too long. Not that that Google reference helps the person who submitted this story in the first place...
Careful clicking on that link (Score:2)
What do they do - put newWindow(this) in the onLoad handler? (Note: preceeding was not necessarily valid, or even, reasonable, Javascript)
Tsk-tsk (Score:3, Funny)
Curiosity: Did your parents sign off on the installation of all of the spyware? If so, why, if not, how did it arrive?
Happy Hunting -- and Holidays.
Re:Tsk-tsk (Score:1)
His Mom or Dad saw a nifty program, downloaded it and blindly clicked through the install screens which added the nasty spyware.
Thank god my mom got a macintosh. None of that crap was ever written for OS9, and now, thanks to OSX, it never will be.
Last Christmas I installed her printer. Talk about a breeze...
Re:Tsk-tsk (Score:1)
Oh wait, I own three of them. I guess I am one.
Re:Tsk-tsk (Score:1)
Re:Tsk-tsk (Score:2)
Switch them to Linux. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Switch them to Linux. (Score:1)
Re:Switch them to Linux. (Score:1)
and they wont have a computer usable by them either. are *you* gonna take thier calls day in and day out? when your trying to work/study/mac on a chick?
Linux is not for parents or your grandma. Apples or windows are more suited for them. Linux is for you (not for me; i'll stick with BSD).
when will you people learn this? and the REAL statistics of TCO/TCA that occompanies OSS (ANY flavour)
regedit (Score:2)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\C
and see what gets kicked off when the system starts. Delete the entries you don't want. Done.
Moderation Totals: +3, Obvious
the quickest surest way (Score:2)