Lemming Tracks: The Zlob Worm and Related Malware Issues

The Lemming doesn't want to go through another week or so like that: running malware scans and having the two other computer-savvy members of the family do some manual search-and-destroy on the hard drives.

Last Tuesday, I played my last card: uninstalling my browser. I use FireFox, which has a pretty good rep - but I'd been upgrading an existing installation for years. Uninstalling it, and Thuderbird, the other Mozilla product I had, was easy - and so was going in and deleting the left-over files and folders. Those uninstallers aren't always as good as they could be.

Then, I re-installed the latest build of FireFox (essentially the same that I had before, except starting from scratch). I tried the Twitter "tinyurls" that were being redirected - and had no problem.

That was a relief: cost for taking this machine in for a complete wipe, scan, reformat and new operating system started somewhere a bit shy of $200. That's not exactly chicken feed for me.

So far, there's been no recurrence of trouble - and several websites are loading faster now. And yes: I've changed critical passwords, and am working my way through the relatively low-priority ones.

So: good news.

Related post:

• "Lemming Tracks: Caught up After a Perfect Storm of Malware and Easter Weekend"
  (April 13, 2009)