Heard about a scam that people do. Need info

new003

Distinguished
Oct 3, 2010
2
0
18,510
Well i bought this custom computer on craigslist a few months back and just recently a guy told me about these scams on there that people do to get peoples bank info/credit card etc etc.

It has something to do with an undetectable HARDWARE not software, something inconspicuous connected somewhere hidden on the motherboard or something. I'll have to give it a second look but has anyone run into this before? That can give me an idea what it looks like.

Or is there a way to disable it? I tried going into device manager and looking through everything but i mean thats just beginner stuff i need to go to bios or something right?
 

mk-ultra

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Nov 1, 2010
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18,510
Hi, could you take a few pictures of the inside of your new computer? I have not heard of hardware you can add to a computer to give it a virus or malware (other then a flashdrive, disk, or extra harddrive).

If you have any doubts,

1. Download Hijackthis http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html?tag=mncol;1
A. After you have downloaded it, run it and save the report (DO NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE, do not mess with anything on it)
B. Go to this website http://hijackthis.de/index.php?langselect=english and post your results, read through it and see if it has picked up anything.

2. Download Malwarebytes http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?tag=mncol;1 and run it

3. Download Hitman Pro 3.5 http://www.surfright.nl/en/downloads/ run it and fix anything it find.

After you have done all that you can rest assured that your computer is clean.
 

puttsy

Distinguished
Aug 14, 2010
5
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18,510
Were the words Dongle, Keylogger, Rootkit, SecurKey, Trusted Platform Module (TPM), etc...? If we have an idea what you are thinking of, we may be able to track it down. May also be something about UEFI and him being mistaken about what can/can't be done with it now.
 
If you are worried about this, re-format the system and install a clean version of Windows on it. There is hardware to capture keystrokes but it needs to connect to something, it would be on a computer port, not on the motherboard. And the hardware would have to communicate to some outside source to work, if you re-format the PC, there is pretty much no chance of that happening.