virus plays antivirus

I received a phone call from my father tonight. He was a bit frustrated, as he was waging war with the latest viral infection on his PC. Sure, I sent him advice a while back and told him that he needed to quit using Internet Exploder and start using Firefox. I gave him a list of free antivirus, anti-spyware, and hijacking repair tools that he needs to download. The problem - it's too late.

After working over the phone with him for nearly an hour, we've determined that one of the viruses taking refuge in his PC is the dreaded spySheriff virus. Okay, technically it's not a virus, but it is malware of the worst kind. This is a true wolf in sheep's clothing, as it advertises itself as an antivirus tool. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My father managed to install Spybot S&D and AntiVir, but the spySheriff (and whatever else he has hiding on his machine) are preventing them from scanning. In addition, we found that spySheriff has disabled Windows Firewall and Antivirus protection. I absolutely loathe these types of malware, and wish I could hunt down the bastards that created it and watch them die a slow painful death.

Unfortunately, that is no more than a pipe dream and, instead, I get to sit on the phone with my father for several hours trying to walk him through a confusing, difficult, and time consuming removal process. It's truly amazing how intelligent these viruses are becoming. AntiVir did manage to blow away a few other trojan horses, but the spySheriff is still holding its ground.

With any luck, I'll be able to start singing "I shot the sheriff" soon enough. In the meantime, when you're surfing the internet, if you get a popup that says your computer is infected, by all means NEVER click on the window to let them "fix" it.