Need Expert Advice - Hacked Symptoms?

[Wongman]

I have a question, hopefully to be answered by the experts here on this forum -

Have i been hacked?

Now this is no normal, run-of -the-mill stuff...this looks like (possible) intrusion by high-end professional - at least that is what (4) tech support guys have told me.

The situation -
Dell PC with XP Home, hooked up to ATT internet with a wireless router directly connected, networked (wireless) to a Dell XP 64bit out to a home office.

Security 2010 infection on the main PC - downloaded and used Spybot, Malwarebytes, bought Spyware Doctor, and AVG free version...seemed to fix everything. Then got XP Security 2010 - cleaned it up (maybe)

Suddenly, I go to the home office pc (XP 64bit) and when I get to the administratoe log-in screen, my mouse and keyboard are dead. So i run through all the diagnostics, and all the tests available.
They all passed with flying colors, but no matter what I do, when I get to the log-in, my keyboard and mouse die. Then I got  Windows 32 krnl.exe missing or corrupt error - so I boot off the XP cd, and get back to where I was.

Finally, I called tech support. We tried everything, and every time we tried to get in through different commands at the prompts, it said access denied, which they thought was weird. Then I told them that when I had been going through the settings, I noticed one of my SATA (out of 4) was turned off, and, there was a remote power turn on set up for 12:00 AM. I restored all settings to factory default.

So in short, after trying to repair or re-install XP, with no way to get into the system, I had to format. My question to the tech guys (4 of them), was "was I hacked? Did they have my computer as a file-cabinet? Did someone run a registry program to diable my access to the system, and kill my mouse and keyboard? But how would they get to the BIOS to turn on a remote power up setting?"

Was it simply a code screw-up, or was I hacked?

[rodi]

Hello Wongman,

I don't know anything about Security 2010 infection (is this correct name?), but I do know about XP Security 2010 scareware. Most likely your main PC was infected with trojan-downloader. Of course, this is only a guess, I don't know for sure. Disabled mouse and keyboard might be sign of compromised PC, but again I''m not sure about BIOS and  remote power up settings, though, I think it's possible to affect those settings as well. Anyway, now you should install a reliable Internet Security suite to prevent such infections in future.
Good luck!

[Wongman]

Thanks for the reply!

I also asked a friend who is a real good IT guy for a large global company. After explaining the situation / symptoms, his response was kind of ambiguous as far as the "hacking" theory, although he did point out that it was possible to affect the BIOS because Dell has a update feature that "hooks" could be put to use in, to get access.

Regardless, I had to format. Now hopefully I can better prepare myself from attack. But even if "someone" wanted to use my computer as a Zombie, or filing cabinet, wouldn't they want to keep themselves (and) their activities invisible? Why kill my mouse and keyboard, alerting me to something being wrong?

I just have nightmares of that guy who wet to jail (but was ultimately vindicated) for distributing child porn, when it turned out to be a virus that collected that crap, used his computer to store and distribute it...hence my paranoia!  :shock:

[rodi]

Wongman,

I completely agree with you, if someone wanted to make you PC a part of a Botnet you wouldn't know that.