HELP !!! - I must have a picked up a dose

**Rosco** · 7th February 2010, 03:47 PM

Troops ... I must have a nasty on board the 'puter.
40 Gig/month, which is 98% gone in 50% of the time ... and I was away for 10 days !!!

Any suggestions for software to identify and remove.

Currently running Kaspersky Security Suite and Malware Bytes, but neither find anything sus.

Previously Malware found a Trojan, but not this time.

Getting desperate.

**p38arover** · 7th February 2010, 03:53 PM

So your computer wasn't switched off for those 10 days?

Are you running any P2P programs, e.g., Azureus, eMule, etc?

Any teenage sons downloading porn?

Do you have an open wireless router where a neighbour could be freeloading off your connection?

**Basil135** · 7th February 2010, 04:10 PM

Guessing you might have a wireless router that the neighbors have found.

If so, you need to lock this down tight.

**Rosco** · 7th February 2010, 04:15 PM

Sorry ... should have added ............

Win 7. Wireless modem is active, but password protected (so unlikely cause).
No P2P progs running.

Edit. .... Was on in my absence (staff), but considered very unlikely cause. No teenagers for porn ............ only me.

**Basil135** · 7th February 2010, 04:19 PM

Make sure your router isn't broadcasting the SSID.

Also, Microstuff have been doing a heap of updates recently, so you may find that is part of the problem.

Is it possible to log onto your ISP account, and check the usage? See when the biggest chunk was used, and this may help. If the usage as been consistently high, then you could be looking for a leak.

Also, check the amount & size of any emails that might have appeared or been sent recently.

**HangOver** · 8th February 2010, 01:19 AM

Originally Posted by Rosco

Sorry ... should have added ............

Win 7. Wireless modem is active, but password protected (so unlikely cause).
No P2P progs running.

Edit. .... Was on in my absence (staff), but considered very unlikely cause. No teenagers for porn ............ only me.

what do you mean by password protected?
wep wpa ?
if you password is in a dictionary its possible its been hacked?

d@rk51d3 · 8th February 2010, 06:23 AM

My first thought is a "borrowed" wi-fi connection.

Hope you haven't left the encryption on the generic WEP password. (a1b2c3d4e5)

Surprising how many do.

**Armadillo** · 8th February 2010, 07:21 AM

When checking the download logs on the modem, look for activity beginning around midnight - 1am. If this is the case, I would suspect Microsoft update is the culprit. Also, if the update can't complete the download, it will start the process again the following night. We saw this happen about 18 months ago when we upgraded to Vista. It just sucked up all our quota in about 10 days - a real PITA.

**Rosco** · 8th February 2010, 09:02 AM

I'd have to sit on the phone to Optus to get details of actual downloads

The web site only gives overall figures, not details.
Password is numerical string (10 digits) so not perfect, but reasonable.
Surely Win 7 updates wouldn't run into Gigabytes ??

**Delta_Farce** · 8th February 2010, 09:43 AM

I'd have that chat to Optus if I were you. Find out what dates significant downloads occurred on, then check IE/Firefox history for those dates. It may be something like Youtube being used all day, or it may be BitTorrent or other P2P.

Also, have a look through your router's logs (if it keeps them) on the same days. If it's showing unknown mac addresses registering under DHCP then someone is stealing your connection. If it doesn, then your computer is the culprit.

WEP wireless encryption is very insecure so if you're using that (which is the defaul on most routers) switch it to WPA2. Almost all computers and phones can use that now, and the encryption is much more robust than WEP.

Finally, if you discover that your connection was stolen I'd change your password to a phrase instead of a number string. With numbers the 'character set' is only 10 large (0-9) whereas an alphabet set is at least 26 large, 52 if capitals are used and larger still if numbers and special characters are added. The combination possibilites are much greater, and therefore harder to break. Crunching the number combinations could be done in minutes on a decent computer.

A favourite line from a song or a book makes a good pass phrase. If you remove the spaces between words, you essentially end up with a 20+ character non-dictionary word.

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