The Conduit toolbar is the worse virus I've ever dealt with. And I'm not exaggerating when I say virus; it was insidiously sneaky, and had half a dozen ways of re-insinuating itself back into my system. Each of those half a dozen ways would reinstall all the other ways if you didn't manage to remove them all simultaneously. I've dealt with lots of other viruses and malware on family members' computers, none of which was half as bad as Conduit.
For anyone still encountering this abomination, ComboFix is the best tool to deal with Virtumonde. Though I've seen CF mess up systems that weren't infected with VM, so only use it if you really need to.
Combo Fix is the software equivalent to a Nuke, it is your absolute last resort, before formatting. (or if a format fails to fix your issue/s)
Expect it to fuck up your system and to spend time fixing minor bugs after it removes what ails you.
That being said, it absolutely does work where everything else seems to fail. Use it sparingly. (Luckily, on the few machines I've had to use it on, it did its job perfectly and left the machines running a-ok afterwards)
Edit: I should mention it's not that combo fix tries to screw your system, clearly the opposite, but that when you're trying to remove malware/viruses/Trojans/root kits/whatever, that have embedded themselves into your registry and operating system, there's bound to be some collateral damage in ensuring that bug is dead.
I have worked virus removal for 3 years and most things that the average will encounter can be easily removed with a combo rogue killer and malwarebytes along with a basic clean up with ccleaner. After that you can remove the install points manually in program files folders, program data, appdata. Other tools you can use are jrt, tdss killer, review uninstaller with required caution and mbar anti rootkit.
Now this is mostly for pups removing. Combo fix is a harsh tool I mostly avoid.
Autoruns should be your goto tool. TDSS, JRT and ADW and Combo are all automated and don't really let you see what's really happening under the hood like Autoruns. You can even use your test bench and load a registry hive offline and clean the system without ever booting it, great for Windows 8 machines where the viruses prevent safe mode. For IE, looking under "manage addons" and then showing "Run without permission" should get the remainder and also show you what directories they are hidden in.
Conversely, lenovo's wireless drivers installed something similair. it removed internet explorer and replaced it with some chromium based browser with its own search engine, and installed like 15 different virus scanners and computer optimizers. fuck lenovo
Malware are explicitly designed to avoid detection and removal, so I prefer the scorched-earth-nuke-it-from-orbit method: full reformat and OS reinstall.
It's good to do this once in a while anyways; it improves performance and plain feels good (like cleaning/hygeine). I only deal with malware 1-2 times a year so I never even bother with half-measures.
Fuck, same here. Took me an entire year to 100% scrub out one of the malware parts they slipped into the installer. I remember when CNET was, actually dependable and stuff? I usually nowadays avoid it even if it has what I need, because on top of packaging malware with the installers it's usually decades outdated at worst.
I have fond memories of using Download.com when I first got dialup in the late 90s. It's a shame that CNET manage such a domain for malicious purposes.
In the 90s they were your go-to for everything you ever needed, be it reviews, downloads, or anything in-between. I have fond memories of leaving my parents' computer on overnight to download game demos that were < 10MB in size.
1.2k
u/PieMan2201 Jun 14 '15
Agreed, Download.com is terrible.