System reverted to an old save point while I was away.

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feeshta

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Mar 22, 2011
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I normally leave my PC running all the time, as it is a media center PC which I use as a DVR. Last night everything was fine when I went to sleep. I didn't open the PC when I woke up the morning, but when I returned home from work today, everything had changed. The PC was only using one of my two monitors, it had changed my background to the default, and numerous programs had been deleted including my anitivirus software. Looking around, it seems that one of my hard dives is no longer showing under my computer, and the PC seems to have reverted to a previous restore point somewhere around December of 2013. After a couple minutes, windows update popped up saying I had 45 important updates to install. They are installing as I speak, but I am worried there is something more going on than just a glitch.

My girlfriend experienced a major hacker attack this weekend while I was away visiting family, and I am wondering if this might be related since we communicate with the affected PC all of the time. When I say hacker attack, I mean someone seized control of her laptop and proceeded to clean out her bank account as she watched. This was due to the fact that she had her passwords saved in her browser. He sent her messages claiming to be technical support from her work(she works online) and telling her that her PC was infected with a virus and he was working to remove it. She was unable to stop him when she realized what was up, and I was out of cell phone range for her to ask what to do or I would have told her to immediately remove internet access.

Does anyone have any insight into what might have happened, and what steps I should take to protect myself?
 
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feeshta

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Mar 22, 2011
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Is there any chance that the reversion to a previous save point was a Microsoft glitch? Possibly due to a bad hard drive? One of my two storage drives seems to be completely dead in the water. I've run scans with both Microsoft Security and AVG anitvirus and neither found anything at all, not even a tracking cookie.

If it was malicious, what would have been the intent? I've changed all of my passwords using my iphone and have not accessed any password protected sites on the PC since the issue arose. I plan to use DBAN to wipe my drive and do a fresh reinstall of windows tonight after work.

How can we protect ourselves going forward? It is a long distance relationship and abandoning chat programs is not an option as phone contact is too expensive. This hacker obviously has information such as our IP addresses, and I know for a fact I did not download anything recently that could have been used in such an attack. I ran complete scans of my PC just last week and they turned up nothing but a couple tracking cookies, as normal.

This is not the first time we have had an issue with hackers. My girlfriend seems to be like honey to them. She's rather attractive, and works online so she is an easy target due to the amount of time she spends online.

Any help that anyone could offer would be much appreciated.

 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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The initial intent was to try to gather your passwords, bank info, etc. Then possibly found a pathway into your PC

Possibly he forced the rollback to the earlier restore point to erase tracks that they had ever been inside the PC.

 
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feeshta

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Mar 22, 2011
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That's basically what I suspected, but wanted verification.

So how do I keep him out in the future? Norton antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials, and vigilance didn't work.
 
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feeshta

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My end of things I can handle fine, but educating her is challenging at best. She doesn't have physical access to my machine, so she didn't give them access to my machine other than by helping them find contact info on hers that lead them to me.

My guess is that the vulnerability is the chat software, but I have been trying for years and she will not leave goddamned Yahoo Messenger, which I despise with a passion hotter than 1000 suns. I am hoping this experience will finally convince her that she needs to give it up, but I don't know which service to go to as a more secure alternative.

By the way, I'm former Air Force myself, although I didn't make it to retirement.
 
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