Why You Need to Leave UAC Turned ON

[jjjallen 37]

Like most Simmers I disabled UAC and as a result payed the price.

 

Did anyone else get bit by the 'Sire' trojan? Basically it crippled my PC and required a total reinstall to resolve. Once it installs it will disable you antivirus software (Mine being Windows Security Essentials). When you try to reactivate it you will get an alert that it is not currently installed. When you go to reinstall it, you will get redirected to another bogus site. Once I found a way around that, Windows essentials would find the offending Sire files, clean them but then reboot on a system crash.

 

In the end my computer would reboot every time within a minute of a windows restart. I first noticed the problem when I was being redirected to random sites when first starting my browser (doesn't matter which browser) and my Internet connection was really sluggish.

 

Fortunately I had a Toshiba disk image to restore from but it required a complete do-over to reinstall all of my FSX files.

 

Anyway the moral of the story is to leave your UAC enabled. If you do turn it off when installing all your favorite FSX stuff MAKE SURE you turn it back on afterwards. (and steer clear of any questionable sites)

 

Cheers

jja

[tf51d 284]

What makes you think leaving it on would have made any difference? Trojans and viruses are usually written in a way to bypass such security measures. Which is why some are able to disable your AV programs and such.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

The telling part of that advice is 'steer clear of questionable sites'. What have you been up to you dirty little sod?!

 

:lol:

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

This is not true. UAC is a low level protection and due vigilance is your best protection. Use common sense when surfing, downloading or any other activities.

 

A lot of us (me included) have a dedicated FSX machine that is used for nothing else other then FSX. I use my laptop for email, work, surfing, and any other day to day computing.

[Anthony1968 19]

I have it permanently turned off because it's a pain in the &@($*. My anti-malware, anti-virus and firewall is kept up to date and I avoid "questionable" sites. I don't think I could do any better than that....could I?

[ZachLW 37]

What makes you think leaving it on would have made any difference? Trojans and viruses are usually written in a way to bypass such security measures. Which is why some are able to disable your AV programs and such.

The telling part of that advice is 'steer clear of questionable sites'. What have you been up to you dirty little sod?!

 

:lol:

 

Both of those!

 

For the most part, getting viruses is usually caused by irresponsible surfing, e-mail use, etc. At any rate, I've been UAC-Disabled since Windows 7 release and haven't suffered a single virus with MSE.I

 

also steer clear of pr0n sites. :Tounge:

[Anthony1968 19]

A lot of us (me included) have a dedicated FSX machine that is used for nothing else other then FSX. I use my laptop for email, work, surfing, and any other day to day computing.

 

Oh! for a dedicated FSX PC. Having said that if I did manage to purchase one it would probably take me weeks to install everything.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

I was always under the impression that UAC was simply to save non-computer savvy folks from themselves. "Ooo, you don't want to touch that, it's too dangerous!" or "Never you mind what that file is for, you just get on and email your daughter in Australia"

"We are Microsoft, we know what is best for you. Move along, nothing to see here"

Etc. etc.

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

Oh! for a dedicated FSX PC. Having said that if I did manage to purchase one it would probably take me weeks to install everything.

 

But when it is all done then you will be more then happy....I think my last reinstall took me 1 week, but it always seems to work best after a fresh install so the time is usually worth the trouble.

[tf51d 284]

Speaking of viruses tonight is the night the FBI is shutting down the server protecting us from the DNS Changer virus, (This is the virus AVSIM warned us about a month or 2 ago.) they uncovered. There are purportedly 4 million systems infected world wide with 500000 in the US. If your system is infected, after Midnight tonight you will not be able to access the internet. You can check your system by going to

 

www.dns-ok.us

 

If you get a green background you should be ok, Red your infected.

 

Here is the story!!

 

http://www.cnn.com/v...om-internet.cnn

 

Here was the original AVSIM story

 

http://forum.avsim.net/page/index.html/_/pri-news/the-dns-changer-malware-r151

[Guest Ps762]

Hi!

 

I think I've been very lucky (touch wood) in that I haven't had a proper virus for years. Occasionally our PC's get malware where a bogus program says you need antivirus or something but usually rebooting into safe mode and running the excellent freeware Malwarebytes anti-malware fixes the problem. Then I usually do a TrendMicro Housecall online virus check.

 

Many years ago on Windows 98 I think I got this one virus which was a total nightmare. It actually copied itself onto most of the files on my system. I lost a lot (but thankfully not all) of Fs98 stuff. It was really a nightmare.

 

Many thanks,

 

Pierre

[Great Ozzie 101]

For the most part, getting viruses is usually caused by irresponsible surfing, e-mail use, etc

 

If you call irresponsible surfing "here" i.e. at AVSIM or Anandtech... then yeah... I am guilty as charged.

 

"Infecting using javascript has been around for awhile, the thing that makes this one different is all you have to do is load the page containing the ad. You do not even need to click on the ad for it to infect the pc" http://forums.anandt....php?p=29544429

 

I keep saying I am going to buy VMware and do all my surfing inside a vm. :p0305:

[ZachLW 37]

If you call irresponsible surfing "here" i.e. at AVSIM or Anandtech... then yeah... I am guilty as charged.

 

"Infecting using javascript has been around for awhile, the thing that makes this one different is all you have to do is load the page containing the ad. You do not even need to click on the ad for it to infect the pc" http://forums.anandt....php?p=29544429

 

I keep saying I am going to buy VMware and do all my surfing inside a vm. :p0305:

 

Rob, you know what I meant! I said "for the most part." At any rate, with that knowledge I use the no-script add-on for Firefox. Check it out if you're a Firefox user.

 

When's the last time Avsim had an infected ad? Like I implied, that stuff usually happens on questionable sites.

[n4gix 4,947]

When's the last time Avsim had an infected ad? Like I implied, that stuff usually happens on questionable sites.

Um, that would have been last week Zach! In fact, that was the proximate cause for AVSIM to suspend advertising until they could buy a commercial replacement for the Open Source backend they had been using...

 

In any case, my main development machine started showing signs of extremely intermittent internet connectivity late last week. For all of Thursday and Friday I was barely able to connect with AVSIM at all, and darn few other places. Email was also very intermittent...

 

For the past two months, every time I tried to Google something, I'd wind up with Google in Portugese, despite knowing that my account was set up to use English exclusively. MS Security Essentials found and quarantined one virus and one trojan. Restoring the system last Friday to the previous Friday's state got my machine running again.

 

UAC would not have done a thing to prevent this from happening. For the most part, UAC is intended the user from doing something stupid. In reality, most user's simply don't bother reading the warnings that popup, but simply click blindly on the okay button while grumbling soto-voce... :He He:

[ZachLW 37]

Um, that would have been last week Zach! In fact, that was the proximate cause for AVSIM to suspend advertising until they could buy a commercial replacement for the Open Source backend they had been using...

 

I stand corrected! That OBX trip threw me off.