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I think I've had one of those infected USB chargers connected to my PC for a while

Discussion in 'General' started by Guardian Box, May 2, 2023.

  1. Guardian Box

    Guardian Box Theocratic Capitalist

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    Does anyone know of any tools I could use to purge their influence from my system?

    Or just what I should do in general?
     
    ArsMagna1337 likes this.
  2. Biigoh

    Biigoh Primordial Tanuki Moderator

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    Back everything up and then do a complete factory wipe.
     
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  3. Guardian Box

    Guardian Box Theocratic Capitalist

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    Like, all of my separate hard drives? Or just re-formatting my C drive and reinstalling windows would be enough?

    I have A LOT of stuff to back up, I'd probably need to buy a data bank or something if I wanted to save all of it
     
  4. wasprider

    wasprider Experienced.

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    You’ll need to reformat every drive attached and scan all the files. You can do it with one spare drive.

    Make sure you’re doing it from a clean install.

    Secondly, the target of choice seems to be personal data and passwords nowadays. If you can you may want to reset your passwords after the scan.

    What made you think you have a corrupted USB charger connected anyway?

    Also, if it is a corrupted USB port, the target is generally smart phones and the like. So you may want to reset your phone as well.
     
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  5. Guardian Box

    Guardian Box Theocratic Capitalist

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    Thanks for the reply.
    I may have made some assumptions to be fair.

    I've had a charger connected to my usb port for a while, and had a problem with a command prompt window appearing for a fraction of a second before disappearing on my screen for a while as well. I may have conflated the two as being connected recently, and may have panicked just a little bit.

    I did several full scans for malware with various programs, found some little things that had been dealt with so far. Did some more involved research, and found that the issue was most likely started by, well, bloated autostart routines.

    Downloaded a decent program dealing with autostart programs and registry keys, disabled things that were set to run even if I had uninstalled them years ago, and so far had no problems of a command window popping up for an eyeblink doing god knows what.

    tl;dr, I thought it was malware doing nefarious things with my system, turns out it was most likely just system bloat fucking things up.

    Probably. Hopefully. Will come back to bitch if the problem comes back.

    (to be fair, formatting and a clean reinstall would have fixed the issue as well)
     
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