Marketing online is fraught with risks. One category is business risk. The other category is technical risk. Business risk is when you try to execute a digital marketing strategy and it fails. Technical risk includes the risk of not implementing your websites and/or scripts correctly. But technical risk also includes the risk from cyber-attacks. One of the most common form is viruses pretending to be a friendly program … like a trojan horse. This blog is about how to remove Antispyware Soft. It’s one of the latest to hit the Internet.
I was attacked by the Antispyware Soft virus today. It got onto my system by some software vulnerability. I’m not exactly sure how. Then again, it seems fairly easy to attack a Windows machine. Antispyware Soft quickly planted itself on my task bar as a “legitimate” antivirus software.
The first thing it did was to pop-up a security notice saying that one of my files was corrupted. It gave me the option to scan my system. Next, it said that my virus definition was out of date. So I needed to update antivirus software by clicking on the “update” icon.
Hmmm. Seems kind of fishy since I use Norton. So I read the error message carefully and noticed a grammatical error. It said, “…protect you computer…” This was another sign that something was amiss.
By now, five other warning messages had popped up. In addition, Windows IE was launched on my computer. I use Firefox.
This was wicked indeed… a virus masquerading as an antivirus software that could launch IE.
The next thing it took over was my Windows applications like Media Player. Antispyware Soft blocked the application every time I tried to launch it. Hmmm.
I ran a scan with Norton. While the scan ran, the rogue software kept popping-up warning messages over my Norton screen. Not good.
Luckily, I still had access to the Internet via my Firefox browser. Thank goodness for browser choices.
I searched and found http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-antispyware-soft.html.
That site provided detailed instructions on how to remove this pest.
In a nutshell, here is what I did to successfully remove Antispyware Soft:
1) Downloaded Malwarebytes Anti Malware (it’s free);
2) Restarted my computer;
3) Pressed F8 during the boot-up so that I could get the “Safe Mode” screen;
4) Selected “Safe Mode with Networking”;
5) Once in Windows Safe Mode, I installed Malwarebytes Anti Malware;
6) Ran a scan inside Malwarebytes;
7) The scan detected the rogue Antispyware Soft;
Deleted the infected files using Malwarebytes (The rogue files hid in my Users folder on my C drive. The file was called [some random characters]tssd.exe, e.g. adlfjsiewpertsse.exe.)
9) Rebooted my computer.
All is well again.
One more thought… I often wondered if software security companies released viruses into the wild so that they could be caught by the software security companies themselves… Nah. Too preposterous.
But this security scam comes pretty close. I wish you safe surfing.
