Whoa ... I have been in a massive war with some extremely nasty trojans and malware/spyware/adware over the last 3 days. I -still- don't know exactly what it was, but it was the most persistent and aggravating piece of crap that I have ever come across. To try and mask itself, it dropped over 40 different spyware/adware/malware and trojans onto my system. It actually uninstalled my Firefox browser leaving my only option as IE. It morphed its name and form at least 3 times, once when I was right in the middle of killing it off. I -think- I finally killed it, but I thought that 2 other times and it re-appeared.

What I love is all the people who think that all you need is to make sure you're patched and have some protection. That's a false security.

My security consists of active memory resident virus, trojan and spyware scanners - I do update checks once per day before I head to work. E-mail interceptors and filters. Multiple lockdowns of registry and internet options. Up to date windows patches. As well as once weekly (or sooner if I think something doesn't look right) full scans using Adaware, Spybot S&D, Pest Patrol and HijackThis. And I still got hit. Disturbing part was I wasn't doing anything at the time. I had just opened IE, started a search on Google and was about to go to a site when I noticed increased network activity and my HD light was on solid. Not sure where it sneaked through which worries me a bit.

Ah well ... need to get some rest and hope I'm done. Be back reading and posting in a couple days.

-=>Donald