Malware pretending to be HDD scan
Posted: December 4th, 2010, 18:00
Suddenly, after startup, an alarming warning message appeared, ostensibly from the program "HDD Scan". It told me my hard drive was ill, and I stood a good chance of loosing all my data. A warning message also appeared as a 'baloon' from my system tray, and kept on appearing as I went along.
As I was not aware of having installed something called "HDD Scan", I wanted to first find out more, so I started firefox - only to get the message that the hdd couldn't be read. In fact, I couldn't start any program at all; especially not any of the bunch of malware detectors I have! Luckily, there was just one exception: i could start HijackThis. It showed me some suspect entries (I'd been wrestling with an infection recently, so I knew the valid entries by heart) and removed them. This solved the problem - at least for the time being.
Since then, I downloaded and used a genuine version of HDD scan, and, as I expected, nothing is wrong with my hdd.
Yet, it was a close call: unbelievable how this thing disabled absolutely everything. What if Hijackthis hadn't started either?
From this experience, and from a bit of websurfing, I conclude there is some quite dangerous malware purporting to be 'HDD Scan'. Maybe a warning is in order?
Mabel
As I was not aware of having installed something called "HDD Scan", I wanted to first find out more, so I started firefox - only to get the message that the hdd couldn't be read. In fact, I couldn't start any program at all; especially not any of the bunch of malware detectors I have! Luckily, there was just one exception: i could start HijackThis. It showed me some suspect entries (I'd been wrestling with an infection recently, so I knew the valid entries by heart) and removed them. This solved the problem - at least for the time being.
Since then, I downloaded and used a genuine version of HDD scan, and, as I expected, nothing is wrong with my hdd.
Yet, it was a close call: unbelievable how this thing disabled absolutely everything. What if Hijackthis hadn't started either?
From this experience, and from a bit of websurfing, I conclude there is some quite dangerous malware purporting to be 'HDD Scan'. Maybe a warning is in order?
Mabel