Vulnerable XP - Can I plug the holes?

ozzy · 23 Jul 2006 at 19:48

I was working away and the weirdest thing happend - the Run dialog box popped up and then disappeared, then another box popped up and it looked like it was installing something.

At that point the alarm bells were ringing and I fired up every spyware app I had.. any, it turns out some evil little spyware was installed.

My point is, I thought my machine was pretty secure - I use NOD32 and the XP Firewall, how the hell can someone be able to remotely fire up the Run dialog box and execute an exe file?

Is there anything I can do to stop this happening again? If I hadn't of noticed it I would be none the wiser :eek:

Thanks

Edit: Oh, and I've read the sticky guide too

ozzy · 24 Jul 2006 at 08:39

Yea everything is up to date, SP2, windows updates - I've got both Spybot & Adware installed.

The only I dont have at the moment is a router - which is something I've not got around to getting, but I guess nows the right time.

Thanks for the comments.

ozzy · 24 Jul 2006 at 10:15

Nothing, I was on the other machine at the time..

I never run any dodgy apps on that machine, nor do I go to any dodgy sites - I dont use IE either.

It's the first time I've ever seen that happen, which is why I was a bit :eek:

ozzy · 24 Jul 2006 at 18:53

Yea I'm leaning towards getting a router... and a new gigabit switch while I'm at it.

ozzy · 25 Jul 2006 at 11:58

Hmm, looking at that it doesn't even perform lol.

Thanks for the link, I'll check some of them out.