{"id":8703,"date":"2010-07-05T16:06:41","date_gmt":"2010-07-05T16:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/combofix_is_great_antivirus_software.html"},"modified":"2010-07-05T16:06:41","modified_gmt":"2010-07-05T16:06:41","slug":"combofix-is-great-antivirus-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/technology\/combofix-is-great-antivirus-software.html","title":{"rendered":"Combofix is Great Antivirus Software"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>A malicious &#8211; fake antivirus message<br \/><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/assets_c\/2010\/06\/internet-scam1-thumb-500x375-7498.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Thumbnail image for internet-scam1.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/assets_c\/2010\/06\/internet-scam1-thumb-500x375-7498-thumb-500x375-7499.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-none\" style=\"\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s funny how ironic life can be as a few weeks back I posted an entry warning my readers about the various forms of <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/security\/malicious-software-to-avoid-online.html\">malicious antivirus<\/a> malware apps which try to install themselves on your PC. I included a few sample malicious screen shots my IT department sent around. The goal was more to help the families and friends of my readers as I imagine most of my readers are technically sophisticated.<\/p>\n<p>Well, yesterday morning I took a look at the laptop which quite often lives on the kitchen table and there it was staring me in the eyes, one of the fake antivirus programs I warned you all about. I tried to run my normal antivirus program and the &#8220;fake&#8221; program intercepted. In fact it intercepted everything I tried to run.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully I had another computer in my house and I decided to download the free antivirus solution <a href=\"http:\/\/www.combofix.org\/\">Combofix<\/a> which I then transferred to a USB drive. I then rebooted the infected laptop into safe mode and copied Combofix locally. Within 30 minutes or less (I walked away at some point and didn&#8217;t time it but it did take more than 10 minutes) the computer was back up and running. All fixed.<\/p>\n<p>What a great utility. I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n<p>Now I have to figure out who was the person who got the machine infected in the first place (and scold them) while ensuring family harmony. <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/mt-static\/plugins\/FCKeditor\/fckeditor\/editor\/images\/smiley\/msn\/teeth_smile.gif\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A malicious &#8211; fake antivirus message It&#8217;s funny how ironic life can be as a few weeks back I posted an entry warning my readers about the various forms of malicious antivirus malware apps which try to install themselves on your PC. I included a few sample malicious screen shots my IT department sent around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,118],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8703"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}