After running a virus, should you instantly shut off the pc?

[cate]

I recently run some malicious exe and my reactions were to quickly shut off my pc via the psu switch after realising the virus was acting too fast for me to try to manually stop it. Then I booted up, quickly went to safe mode, did anti viruses, manually reviewed files etc etc

But is this a good idea?
My thinking is, a virus needs some time to intialise itself. If it doesn't have that time, perhaps it would be unable to "upload" it's virus code to my computer or something. So shutting off the pc gives me time to think and help prevent the virus from doing much damage -- but these are my uneducated thoughts.

[Morkonan]

Originalmente postado por cate:

I recently run some malicious exe and my reactions were to quickly shut off my pc via the psu switch after realising the virus was acting too fast for me to try to manually stop it. Then I booted up, quickly went to safe mode, did anti viruses, manually reviewed files etc etc

But is this a good idea?
My thinking is, a virus needs some time to intialise itself. If it doesn't have that time, perhaps it would be unable to "upload" it's virus code to my computer or something. So shutting off the pc gives me time to think and help prevent the virus from doing much damage -- but these are my uneducated thoughts.

Those are wrongthink thoughts.... Do you honestly believe that you can react quicker than an instruction-set given to your computer? Seriously?

You're joking, right?

And, what is "much damage?" Most viruses aren't put in place to break stuff.

Even a half-baked virus isn't going to give you much of an indication it's setting itself up, installing, or well on the way towards infecting your machine. Once it's there and it's executed, your system has decided that it's legit...

IF you ever end up shutting down your system because you believe a virus is attempting to install itself, do not then reboot that system without doing so via a bootable, clean, CD/USB. Then, run every anti-virus under the sun in hopes of finding it and getting rid of it. Win11 has better protections against rootkits and pre-OS boot exploits, so if you're really worried you should update to Win11.

The best cure is to not get infected in the first place. Surf safe.

[Tesseract]

off to safe past the post is usually isolated unless it's cleverly nested

worst case you can use recovery to wind back the clock or reformat. or zero fill and surf the entropic wave.

[[ T h e B o s s ]]

https://youtu.be/LSgk7ctw1HY

[cate]

Originalmente postado por Morkonan:

Originalmente postado por cate:

I recently run some malicious exe and my reactions were to quickly shut off my pc via the psu switch after realising the virus was acting too fast for me to try to manually stop it. Then I booted up, quickly went to safe mode, did anti viruses, manually reviewed files etc etc

But is this a good idea?
My thinking is, a virus needs some time to intialise itself. If it doesn't have that time, perhaps it would be unable to "upload" it's virus code to my computer or something. So shutting off the pc gives me time to think and help prevent the virus from doing much damage -- but these are my uneducated thoughts.

Those are wrongthink thoughts.... Do you honestly believe that you can react quicker than an instruction-set given to your computer? Seriously?

You're joking, right?

And, what is "much damage?" Most viruses aren't put in place to break stuff.

Even a half-baked virus isn't going to give you much of an indication it's setting itself up, installing, or well on the way towards infecting your machine. Once it's there and it's executed, your system has decided that it's legit...

IF you ever end up shutting down your system because you believe a virus is attempting to install itself, do not then reboot that system without doing so via a bootable, clean, CD/USB. Then, run every anti-virus under the sun in hopes of finding it and getting rid of it. Win11 has better protections against rootkits and pre-OS boot exploits, so if you're really worried you should update to Win11.

The best cure is to not get infected in the first place. Surf safe.

Thanks for the info;
I do genuily think a .exe takes some seconds to get itself fully initialised, like when I go to open steam for example it takes some seconds to launch. When I launch a game it may take a while before I see the loading screen.
And I am confident that I can identify obvious viruses doing stuff by odd activity; if it's on the browser it'd be opening new tabs, windows even, and going to weird sites or going to many sites on a short time. And if it's an odd acting .exe, my cursor would go between the loading icon and normal, and perhaps some other stuff like a plain application window appearing for a second, or windows11 notification sounds.
I suppose that makes sense, most viruses wouldn't break my files or anything, maybe just install some bitmine miner? idk; my thinking of viruses doing significant "damage" (like doing weird ♥♥♥♥ like changing my background or disconnecting internet or usb device install sounds), is probably from paranoia of them. I don't understand viruses or pc security much at all, and yet acknowledge that they have chance to be extremely bad for my pc.
And by the way I am on win11 and I manually disabled security features in order to execute the .exe (and in hindset yes this was stupid, I should never disable security, especially for some shady ass .exe)

[cate]

Originalmente postado por 𝔹 Ø 𝕊 𝕊:

https://youtu.be/LSgk7ctw1HY

Is there a point to you sharing this? Maybe you're saying that viruses almost never do any real harm, or that I'm a moron for thinking shutting off my pc after running a virus is a good idea, or maybe you're just sharing some video you liked?

[agu]

It's always safer to just format once you've opened infected files to be extra safe, especially if you don't know what the virus does. At least I wouldn't get anything valuable in that machine if I were you

[[ T h e B o s s ]]

Originalmente postado por cate:

Originalmente postado por 𝔹 Ø 𝕊 𝕊:

https://youtu.be/LSgk7ctw1HY

Is there a point to you sharing this? Maybe you're saying that viruses almost never do any real harm, or that I'm a moron for thinking shutting off my pc after running a virus is a good idea, or maybe you're just sharing some video you liked?

Is there a point to you over-analyzing posts people make on the internet in a hostile manner?

[Vault Hunter 101]

Computers are so fast that a simple virus would take miliseconds to launch and a lot of them add themselves to start during launch so you restarting the PC is just you restarting the virus.

Just get a good antivirus (BitDefender, Emsisoft, MalwareBytes, Kaspersky) and don't do any shady stuff and you should be 99,9% safe

[Barney, from Black Mesa.]

Binary code within a virus can act as fast as your computer and can unpack all its potentially harmful files and take-over your computer (and its permissions) before you even consciously think to react appropriately. Think to remember well that the human-mind does not operate as fast as a computer so what has happened has likely already happened before you could of reacted.

What I would do is run a full security scan before shutting it down as it might lock you out from the system depending on how powerful and well-designed the virus is. After you've done a full security scan, then I would shut down the computer and run it in safe-mode and do another full virus-scan.

If there's anything on your system that is acting out-of-place or has any unusual and persistent issues that the virus scanner couldn't identify then you either have to resign and do a full-factory reset which will make you lose all your files however fully remove the computer of all its contents (including the virus), or take it to a computer shop unless you think you can identify the virus and deal with it yourself (which I wouldn't advise).

I haven't dealt with any viruses in a long-time as I tend to be very conservative and careful with what packages I download and to what permissions I give it. Be wise next time to test any programs on a virtual machine before downloading it through your computer and don't give it full administrator permissions unless you're absolutely certain that its contents are perfectly safe and are fully trustworthy to deem with those special admin-granted permissions.

Do not plug in a USB and try to save any files. Your private files might already be corrupted by the virus and harbour a possible infection-risk to any USB or external hard-drives that you have connected to the machine. That's why it's a good idea to backup your files.

[cate]

Originalmente postado por 𝔹 Ø 𝕊 𝕊:

Originalmente postado por cate:

Is there a point to you sharing this? Maybe you're saying that viruses almost never do any real harm, or that I'm a moron for thinking shutting off my pc after running a virus is a good idea, or maybe you're just sharing some video you liked?

Is there a point to you over-analyzing posts people make on the internet in a hostile manner?

Sorry you felt it was hostile, the point to me analyzing posts is because I want to like learn and find out info; makes sense as I'm autistic and part of that means I'm "an analytical thinker" which more or less means I'm not very creative, not good socially, and am more inquisitive than usual

[Dracoco OwO]

Next time you try to mess with actual malwares use a Virtual Machine to do so.

[[ T h e B o s s ]]

Originalmente postado por cate:

Originalmente postado por 𝔹 Ø 𝕊 𝕊:

Is there a point to you over-analyzing posts people make on the internet in a hostile manner?

Sorry you felt it was hostile, the point to me analyzing posts is because I want to like learn and find out info; makes sense as I'm autistic and part of that means I'm "an analytical thinker" which more or less means I'm not very creative, not good socially, and am more inquisitive than usual

Understandable. Have a nice day.

[Morkonan]

Originalmente postado por cate:

Thanks for the info;
I do genuily think a .exe takes some seconds to get itself fully initialised, like when I go to open steam for example it takes some seconds to launch. When I launch a game it may take a while before I see the loading screen.

But, it's already running, though...

At that point, your computer is running the code. If there's a delay in a screen popping up, it's because Steam is handshaking with the servers, checking your account information, and downloading new marketing graphics.

A typical virus has much less legwork to do than Steam. Most viruses you'll get initially are just tiny little packages that try to set themselves up as legit services so that they can late tell their creator they're ready to download a bigger package.

And I am confident that I can identify obvious viruses doing stuff by odd activity; if it's on the browser it'd be opening new tabs, windows even, and going to weird sites or going to many sites on a short time. And if it's an odd acting .exe, my cursor would go between the loading icon and normal, and perhaps some other stuff like a plain application window appearing for a second, or windows11 notification sounds.

With all possible well-meaning and with complete empathy and candor for a fellow human being, you're deluding yourself.

Those are crap bits of malware, probably some dumb javascript thing, an old marketing pop-up or even lamer, a hijacker.

Now, it's possible some viruses could upset system resources while they're working really hard. And, if they're working really hard? It's too late. At that point, you're the doctor at the ER who sees a patient that can't be saved... Be proactive - Surf Safe, don't do unsafe things, scan everything with everything, always. :)

I suppose that makes sense, most viruses wouldn't break my files or anything, maybe just install some bitmine miner? idk; my thinking of viruses doing significant "damage" (like doing weird ♥♥♥♥ like changing my background or disconnecting internet or usb device install sounds), is probably from paranoia of them.

Most viruses have some other intent other than breaking things. Breaking things is bad. Breaking things do not result in "money." The most obviously troublesome are, of course, "ransomware." If you get hit, contact your police department or a national investigative agency - Some of those have been cracked and law enforcement can help. (Sometimes)

Prankware is more uncommon, but when it's spotted, it usually comes from people you know. I totally did not install a "spider crawling across the screen prankware" on an arachnophobic friend's computer. Really, I didn't...

I don't understand viruses or pc security much at all, and yet acknowledge that they have chance to be extremely bad for my pc.
And by the way I am on win11 and I manually disabled security features in order to execute the .exe (and in hindset yes this was stupid, I should never disable security, especially for some shady ass .exe)

Why did you want to run that .exe? I don't need to know what it was, but you have to judge the value versus the possible risks.

Scan everything you download your anti-virus.

You can also scan webpages:

https://urlscan.io/

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload

^-- Also will scan uploaded files if you're worried your AV has been compromised or isn't functioning correctly.


There's all sorts of great freeware out there. There really is. And, the most popular is going to be targeted by hackers. Most professionally run sites are going to provide checksum hashes for their "click to download freeware" so users can check it before it's installed to be sure some hacker hasn't fooled with it or is sitting in between the user and the download.

https://www.lifewire.com/validate-md5-checksum-file-4037391

That's not terribly common, but for popular freeware it's more common.

If the site isn't quite reputable, your risk obviously increases.

Some tips: https://www.helpcloud.com/tags/internet-safety-rules/

(Note: There's a lot of "how to surf safe" webpages out there. Many of them are selling something. To the best of my knowledge, the above isn't trying hard to sell anything but itself. Though, some VPN recommends and specific apps need to be researched on their own.)

[A&A]

There is still the option to reset your pc and use system backup, but the problem is if the virus modified some of the system files, that wont fix your problem.

[lightwo]

Since ransomware and the like have to run for longer to finalise the damage, it sounds like a good idea just to be safe, but I would put shutting off internet access about as high in priority in case anything leaves your network. Just don't touch anything but safe mode (or use a live OS) until it's evident there's nothing else to clean up after.

Also, hesitating to shut off would fail for the aforementioned reason, but considering there are so many possibilities, I wouldn't personally call any reflexes definitive. You never know if it's barely anything, encryption of all files, wiping BIOS or just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the OS in ways that don't make a difference if you boot again.

Ultimately, either prepare yourself with experience or the computer with automated software to have higher criticism of what to run.