WARNING: You could do worse than to read this.
Holy crap I was pissed off tonight. I couldn't even see straight.
Apparently at some point my computer was infested with a particularly persistent parasite called IEPlugin. This results in all kinds of snappy things happening with the browser and resources being consumed. It reinstalls itself if you get rid of it and somehow infests many aspects of your system.
I have below a list of interesting sites I managed to come across. Who knows? My pain may alleviate that of someone else.
The following is an article written by a professional computer expert and shows just how insidious is this little gem. Read the "license" for this thing. It's a riot.
http://www.mvps.org/inetexplorer/data/ieplugin.htm
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/
Note that a lot of the paid products out there are produced by the same people who make parasites and trojans. They steal programs from one another as well. It's a veritable den of thieves.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/prevent.php
That last one has some really good advise. Pay particular attention to the references to Browser Helper Objects, as this thing puts one into your browser. Look for bhocop.zip. The object in question is the one where its description is blank. Of course.
Also handy is ZoneAlarm, which is free. WinXp claims to have a firewall but it is only a one-way firewall. It protects from outside influence but does not protect from something that is oon the inside passing on information allowing internal accesses. It basically doesn't look for the thief in your house already opening the door for the rest of them.
If anyone has any insights or advise about this I would gladly entertain them. I could use all the help I can get, even though I have gotten rid of what I think is the most part of this thing.
Well anyway. If it ever happened I would consider it a personal favor to me if someone managed to find the assholes responsible for this crap and other crap like it and beat them to a quivering mass of pain and blood.
This kind of thing makes me consider taking some pretty intensive courses just so I can help with this. I had the idea, in my idealistic youth, of working on coding a "virus" that auto-updates itself and acts as a form of pathological virus protection. It owuld have been kind of an anti-virus virus.
Apparently at some point my computer was infested with a particularly persistent parasite called IEPlugin. This results in all kinds of snappy things happening with the browser and resources being consumed. It reinstalls itself if you get rid of it and somehow infests many aspects of your system.
I have below a list of interesting sites I managed to come across. Who knows? My pain may alleviate that of someone else.
The following is an article written by a professional computer expert and shows just how insidious is this little gem. Read the "license" for this thing. It's a riot.
http://www.mvps.org/inetexplorer/data/ieplugin.htm
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/
Note that a lot of the paid products out there are produced by the same people who make parasites and trojans. They steal programs from one another as well. It's a veritable den of thieves.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/prevent.php
That last one has some really good advise. Pay particular attention to the references to Browser Helper Objects, as this thing puts one into your browser. Look for bhocop.zip. The object in question is the one where its description is blank. Of course.
Also handy is ZoneAlarm, which is free. WinXp claims to have a firewall but it is only a one-way firewall. It protects from outside influence but does not protect from something that is oon the inside passing on information allowing internal accesses. It basically doesn't look for the thief in your house already opening the door for the rest of them.
If anyone has any insights or advise about this I would gladly entertain them. I could use all the help I can get, even though I have gotten rid of what I think is the most part of this thing.
Well anyway. If it ever happened I would consider it a personal favor to me if someone managed to find the assholes responsible for this crap and other crap like it and beat them to a quivering mass of pain and blood.
This kind of thing makes me consider taking some pretty intensive courses just so I can help with this. I had the idea, in my idealistic youth, of working on coding a "virus" that auto-updates itself and acts as a form of pathological virus protection. It owuld have been kind of an anti-virus virus.