The rootkit is dead. It royally fucked my machine though. My buddy basically had to create a new user account and start over. Same computer and programs, but after we deleted the rootkit it affected the ability to access anything from the original account. It was so embedded into my hard drive that it could no longer function without its presence. Crazy.

Now my computer runs like it was brand new. Lightning fast and a stark difference then what I had gotten used to these last few months.

He also schooled me on the people behind these things. He said Russia is a big player in computer viruses. He said they most likely get access to hundreds of thousands of machines and literally rent the use of these computers out to people who do things like drop fake anti-virus software and wait for someone to stupidly buy the thing with their credit card. They also access your processing power and use it to hack into networks and do illegal shit. This is probably why my computer was running so slow. It was being used for projects outside of mine. yikes!

The weirdest thing to realize is most of the people behind this are probably under the age of 18. You infernal kids!

They get your passwords, your cc info etc. My buddy told me that few people ever really have major problems with these things that he has seen, fortunately. I ran my credit report today and nothing appears to be strange. Ill be vigilant but its crazy that apparently I had this little bastard on my machine since August so Im sure my processing power has been used to do all kinds of shady things. He said this kind of thing is pretty prevalent and a lot of people probably have rootkits running in the background completely unaware. But if you dont have much money like myself and dont buy bullshit anti-virus software when it pops up on your machine, you are probably going to be fine.