Coloradosheep.com

Ewido doing it’s anti-spyware thing

I’ve had an unproductive day due to a Trojan on my home computer. The clue that something was wrong was when I started up Windows XP I got a dialog box asking me to log into coloradosheep.com. If this matches your experience you’ll probably want to know how to remove it. I’ve used Ewido’s online scan service to clean my computer. You’ll need to visit the site with Internet Explorer and allow an ActiveX control to scan your machine. You’ll need be patient and wait for a complete scan. The scan found the file backdoor.vb.ate in the memory almost straight away, but it wan’t until the end of the scan that it also found it in a Windows archive and also backdoor.ace in a folder named JavaScript Vault.

This seems to be connected with an install of Evrsoft’s 1st Page 2006, which I installed and looked at for someone who wanted an easy HTML editor. It’s a shame as otherwise it’s rather good. It does have some joke virus scripts, but thankfully it’s possible to identify the genuine trojan as the author was sufficiently dimwitted to name his creation “Backdoor”. Disturbingly this has been sat on my computer despite having McAfee Virus Scan, Privacy and Firewall and Adaware all running.

You can download a free package AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 to keep an eye open for this kind of problem.

I’m expecting to spend the rest of today scanning the other machines in the house and re-checking the infected ones to ensure they’re clean. I now plan to use something like Kanotix or Knoppix (which are Linux systems which run from CD) usually. When I have the luxury of choosing which system I get next, I’ll get a Mac.

Not just because of the cool adverts.

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