Anybody else experienced this? I don’t have any kind of firewall and apparently my “Base” has been infiltrated.
Somebody has control of my system to the point of even choosing a background for my desktop.
Any recommendations.
Yup…unplug your PC from its internet connection and completely rebuild your PC unless you are very good at ferreting out hackers within your system.
When I say rebuild I mean a complete format (wipe) of your hard drive. Once rebuilt get some antivirus software and a firewall up and running before connecting back to the internet.
In the future try not to download anything you don’t implicitly trust (e.g. a program or update from Microsoft is ok). People using file sharing programs such as Bear Share or Audio Galaxy are particularly vulnerable since you don’t always know what someone has sent along with that new file you just downloaded. MP3’s I think are safe but other things may not be.
Also realize that you may have brought a trojan in some other way than through your internet connection if you use floppies from other places or people.
Thanks, Mr. a-Mole. Its a pretty freaky thing, very unsettling. Now I truly understand the importance of a Firewall.
Unsettling is the least of it. I’ve read some pretty whacked-out stories. In one a woman’s ex-boyfriend left a trojan horse on her PC and assumed complete control over that PC. For awhile she had no idea. She started getting a clue when bills weren’t getting paid and customers she had started responding angrily to messages she had sent. She ran her own business out of her home and her ex would block e-mails she sent, write inappropriate e-mails to her customers, mess with her financial files and so on. When her computer started talking to her she really freaked out. She had a web camera on her PC and her ex would watch her with it and use a text-to-speech program to make her PC say things about what she might be doing at any given time. Not being very computer savvy she had no clue for a long time what the hell was happening till a friend of hers finally found the problem.
In another case a guy was extorting money from his previous company using inside information that the executives had no clue as to how he was getting it. Eventually they found a trojan horse in their comuters that allowed the guy to grab all sorts of inside info and threaten the company with it.
NOTE: I assume you will backup data files before rebuilding your PC. I realize this is necessary but be careful when replacing them on your system. You never know where the culprit may be hiding. Restore your files only after you have a working and up-to-date virus scanner watching your system. Once the data is restored scan your system again and setup weekly virus scans to run automatically afterwards.
You also might consider using Windows NT or Windows XP and formatting your hard drive as an NTFS (rather than FAT32) partition(s). NTFS has much stronger security features than FAT32 does. Unfortunately some programs do not like being on an NTFS partition. Still, it’s something to consider (if you do NTFS be sure to pay attention to the security settings running on your PC).
As for a firewall Windows XP has a built in firewall but I would skip that and get a ‘real’ firewall instead. The XP version is ok for a casual hacker but it’s not very good against a determined one. Look at reviews and get yourself a decent firewall and learn how to set it up appropriately. It’s kind of a drag but it will serve you well.
Finally, realize that nothing is 100% secure (except for unplugging your computer from the network). All you can do is your best to make life difficult for those trying to takeover your system. Hopefully they’ll think it’s not worth the trouble and go elsewhere (which is what usually happens unless there is something on your PC specifically that they want or someone has a grudge against you personally).
What’s the thread title about? What is a “Base”?
jimpatro, did you get some kind of message on your pc screen that says “Your Base are Belong to Us”?
That’s right Keeve, sorry if I didn’t clarify.
A box popped up in the middle of the screen declaring:
Your Base are Belong to Us. The system locked up at first and wouldn’t let me close any applications including the strange message window. Then a still of Times square replaced my desktop background. A theatre marquis displayed the same message “Your Base are Belong to Us”.
Weird huh?
thanx. yeah, extremely bizarre!
The phrase “all your base are belong to us” comes from an old computer game. Obviously, english was not the native language of the programmers, and they thought that they would save the cost of a “real” translator.
The phrase has since become very popular on the internet, and a web search for it will likely reveal hours of reading material on the subject.
Someone obviously thought it would be a cute message to stick into their attack on your PC.
I skimmed the answer and didn’t expressly see, but the best firewall you can get is also completely free.
Go to http://www.zonelabs.com and get Zonealarm. Zonealarm makes your system invisible on the net, and when you’re invisible, hackers either:
1: Won’t see you
2: See you, but stick with less secure targets.
Very small and simple to use.
Cheers.
A software firewall isn’t going to be of much value in this case, or in any case for that matter. Software firewalls can sometimes block the communications between existing trojans and the persons using it, but clearly if they have enough access to plant a trojan in the first place it would be trivial to disable/modify the firewall.
The main problem with software firewalls is that since they are running on your machine, the data has to have already arrived and been interpreted by Windows before the firewall gets to see it.
It’s most likely that you were infected via a program you downloaded from a, shall we say, less than savory website. Trojans usually broadcast their presence to anyone who comes looking, so people will sometimes scan entire ISPs at once and gain lists of thousands of infected machines. They can then log in and mess with any of them at their leisure.
Your best defense lies not in a firewall or virus scanner, but in common sense. Download programs only from reputable sources, and make sure you know what you’re getting. If you wish, after downloading scan the file with a very recently updated version of a good antivirus scanner, such as Antiviral Toolkit Professional (www.avp.ch) . The standard “don’t run files people send you unless you know for sure what they are” warning also applies here. Also, make sure you disable any servers that you don’t want. Some versions of windows automatically install IIS, make sure you remove it. And keep up on windows security patches.
As for what to do now, format your harddrive, and do FDISK /MBR. This will remove anything on your drive that could be infected. Clean install windows, and virus scan any backups BEFORE loading them. Treat all floppies you accessed or backups you made as tainted.
Overall, practice safe downloading in the future and you won’t have any problems. Hope this helps!
I know how to format, but what is FDISK/MBR? This doesn’t involve you, does it? 
…
“I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming… They don’t know I’m only using blanks.” - Emo Philips
My namesake is a DOS program that’s designed to partition harddrives, among other things. One of the other things is a function to rewrite the Master Boot Record, or MBR. The MBR is what decides whether a disk is bootable or not. For example, if you stick any old floppy in your drive and boot up, the “Non System disk or disk error” message is triggered by a tiny program in the Master Boot Record of the floppy. On a harddrive, it determines how the Operating System boots. The Master Boot Record isn’t normally visible to anything and doesn’t get wiped even with a Format, which makes it a favorite place for viruses to hide.
FDISK /MBR rewrites the Master Boot Record, thus ruthlessly killing any litte bugs currently in residence:)
“All your base are belong to us” was a flavour of the month saying amongst tech-types about a year ago. A weird Flash montage which I assume was based on the computer game was put together with those words cleverly imposed on all sorts fo signs and monuments. I’ve lost the url, unfortunately.
Ditto, though a friend of mine has a link to it in his home page. It’s seriously funny stuff. I thought I was going to die the first time I saw it.
I actually printed out the phrase in large text and put in the back window of our car. We get some really strange looks. It’s great!
Anyway, saoory to hear about this guy screwing with you, jimpatro. Always a scary thing to realize how many people are adept at sneaking into your system.
I’ll see if I can get that url and post it somewhere so ya’ll can get a look at it.
Thanks for all the advice Dopers. I knew I could count on you.
before you completely wipe your hard drive, try a virus scan (you can do this online for free at http://www.antivirus.com/housecall ); it may be that all they have done is put a ‘trojan’ on your system (you’ll still need the firewall though).
Something is wrong with my rediculous work computer, but check out planettribes.com/allyourbase etc. etc. There is an official homepage for the thing.