Stumped - Dell XPS8500 and wireless connection

Channel Hopper

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I have a client with a Dell XPS 8500 with Win10 o/s. Nothing in it has been modified since it was built and set up, with possibly the exception of the graphics card, plus the peripheral mouse and keyboard are as per the orignal specification.

They were the victim of a phishing attack a couple of weeks ago, but after letting their friendly 'BT representative of India' in to have a look around via the teamViever software (after enabling the remote assistance) they were savvy enough to pull the broadband and unplug everything until I had time to check.

I have decided to refresh the tower since it has been three years in operation , moreso since any previous restore points appear to been removed, before lookng it there has been any files moved/infected/corrupted.

What is odd is that without reconnecting the LAN cable to the router as I would normally do to start the cleanup, the PC is still able to link to their broadband, even though as far as I can gather without taking the case apart there is no wireless card inside and the tower is of metal construction.

So my question is, does the XPS8500 have WLAN capability as standard, or is the computer able to connect to the outside world through a peripheral device connected by USB. The only two items are the aformentioned keyboard/mouse (I thought this was a bluetooth device but could be wrong), or their wireless printer (Canon thing), which is set up as a networked device, but also has the USB cable installed since there was a period last year when their broadband wasn't working.

Pulling the plug on the hub of course does stop intrusion but it is not an ideal solution.

Thanks in advance.
 

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Rats, it does have a wireless card as standard

 

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If you have a LAN connection available, then I would disable the WIFI card, as the LAN would be the fastest of the two connections.
 

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Bit late for that. I had hoped to isolate the pc as I was carrying out some checks on the intrusion.

Anyhow a refresh appears to have done most of what is needed. Now to repopulate what was removed.
 

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Their is a chance that they had stolen all or some of their login details including ids , password , photos ,documents etc better change everything ASAP
Their stolen details will be surface on all the doggy websites very soon
They better report it to the Cyber crime unit. I know people whose details were stolen by Indian scam houses operational in Mumbai 10 years ago and they still stung by scammers.
 

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Their is a chance that they had stolen all or some of their login details including ids , password , photos ,documents etc better change everything ASAP
Their stolen details will be surface on all the doggy websites very soon
They better report it to the Cyber crime unit. I know people whose details were stolen by Indian scam houses operational in Mumbai 10 years ago and they still stung by scammers.
Quite correct, however, the means of identifying all of those accounts is almost impossible to ascertain, yes the obvious ones of the live accounts are easy enough and usually carried out as soon as a breach is discovered by the user if they astute enough. Even so, what about the accounts that you no longer have access to or you have already deleted or closed. It is two and a half years since I was hacked yet despite having VPNs, firewalls and AV software, supposedly to protect my accounts over this Christmas period, whilst 5G services were being finalised on the nearest mast, I noticed someone scrolling through my Whatsapp messages on my phone and had to take immediate action. The day after whilst watching TV a message kept saying the TV internet connection was disconnected then reconnected again, three times. Looking at the network activity which I fully monitor and record I noticed that three times someone had tried to change the MAC number of the TV via ARP spoofing and three times it was corrected whether that was by the Samsung software or A.N.Other I have no idea. My TV had previously taken over in 2018 by the Mumbai Kodi suppliers drastically reducing the home bandwidth I pay for whilst they were supplying UK Freeview channels to elsewhere in the world and my other TV accounts as at the same time my Netflix account and BT account were both taken over. Despite password changes account closures I am still getting warned about breaches from Google and Bit Defender, because these lists of logins and passwords have been incorporated into lists for sale on the dark web. I am unable to view or amend those lists so they remain an issue in perpetuity.

I also have to put up with idiots ending out pause signals when listening to commentaries and videos on youtube etc boring little insignificant morons that they are
macchangesedit.png

There are sites supposedly allowing you to check however, I would not personally use one as they could be a trigger for a code injection worm to hunting your email address and start the process to get into your systems in the first place. That is the problem today, nobody knows anymore what is and what isn't genuine.

I am still convinced our home is being monitored by something especially as I recently started a steroid inhaler and suddenly began getting a weekly Asthma UK email and having had conversations with a family member last week about diabetes I am now receiving diabetes email.
 

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Am glad someone finds it funny Tony.
 

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I have a client with a Dell XPS 8500 with Win10 o/s. Nothing in it has been modified since it was built and set up, with possibly the exception of the graphics card, plus the peripheral mouse and keyboard are as per the orignal specification.

They were the victim of a phishing attack a couple of weeks ago, but after letting their friendly 'BT representative of India' in to have a look around via the teamViever software (after enabling the remote assistance) they were savvy enough to pull the broadband and unplug everything until I had time to check.

I have decided to refresh the tower since it has been three years in operation , moreso since any previous restore points appear to been removed, before lookng it there has been any files moved/infected/corrupted.

What is odd is that without reconnecting the LAN cable to the router as I would normally do to start the cleanup, the PC is still able to link to their broadband, even though as far as I can gather without taking the case apart there is no wireless card inside and the tower is of metal construction.

So my question is, does the XPS8500 have WLAN capability as standard, or is the computer able to connect to the outside world through a peripheral device connected by USB. The only two items are the aformentioned keyboard/mouse (I thought this was a bluetooth device but could be wrong), or their wireless printer (Canon thing), which is set up as a networked device, but also has the USB cable installed since there was a period last year when their broadband wasn't working.

Pulling the plug on the hub of course does stop intrusion but it is not an ideal solution.

Thanks in advance.
I think the best solution here would be give it the 'big pill' and do a fresh install of Windows..
 

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I think the best solution here would be give it the 'big pill' and do a fresh install of Windows..


+1, agree 100%.
Fresh install from a bootable USB stick after a complete disk wipe out including deletion and recreation of partitions followed by formatting then a clean Windows install.
 

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Unless I'm mistaken, the Dells have W10 embedded within the recovery drive section, pressing refresh clears out the old one (complete with all upgrades it has taken on since connection to the outside world), plus any programmes that Microsoft feels are not condusive to the running of the machine. All personal files are kept secure until the operation is complete.

Since pressing the button and waiting for about two hours, the PC has been running far quicker than is used to, with no change once Win Defender updated to the latest security elements. I have reinstalled the printer software and will introduce Malwarebytes when I next get a chance.
 

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Channel Hopper

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Forgot to mention Firefox and Chrome (plus I suppose other non MS browsers) also get the Heave Ho, requiring a reinstall, Edge remains. :-doh
 

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Personally I wouldnt use a system that had possibly be compromised unless the hard drive had been at the very least wiped & had a full reinstall, preferably with the hard drive replaced. There are persistant rootkits out there that can survive quick reinstalls.
 

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BTW on the subject of security you can see if any email address is on the scam list here


All yahoo addresses are suspect after the Yahoo database was swiped a few years ago.
 

jeallen01

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Forgot to mention Firefox and Chrome (plus I suppose other non MS browsers) also get the Heave Ho, requiring a reinstall, Edge remains. :-doh
IObit Uninstaller will get rid of pretty much anything including Edge - but that will come back again with the next Windows update because it's "embedded" in W10! :-doh

BTW, I personally prefer Firefox so far.
 

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IObit Uninstaller will get rid of pretty much anything including Edge - but that will come back again with the next Windows update because it's "embedded" in W10! :-doh

BTW, I personally prefer Firefox so far.

Firefox is great, but Vivaldi is even better.
 

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Firefox has turned into a right old resource hog the last few years. Mine is currently using over 2 gig of ram. :oops: Not doing any streaming, just a few tabs open.
 

jeallen01

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Firefox has turned into a right old resource hog the last few years. Mine is currently using over 2 gig of ram. :oops: Not doing any streaming, just a few tabs open.
When "all this going on now" (and that includes a lot of stuff here!) is over then I'll look at other browsers - OTOH, now that a lot of my daily browsing is done on the EliteDesk 800 G2 with16GB RAM, an extra 2GB of "lost" RAM doesn't have a big impact :D
OTOH2, my little 8 yr old dual-core Vivobook S200 in the lounge seems to able to "cope" with concurrently running Outlook 2016, Firefox AND Chrome (for THIS forum because I found a lot of editing issues here with FF!) is running at around 80% RAM usage with 4GB RAM - so I don't think it's entirely an FF issue.
 
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Sleepingwiththefish

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Am glad someone finds it funny Tony.
It's actually very funny that people use and abuse of internet based services and devices that actually have little or no protection againt attacks...
What people expect? Connect a tv/pc/whatever to internet, many even do this directly without some NAT firewall, with a bunch of ports opened and expect the best? Good luck with that!
Can't even call it hacking.
 

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It's actually very funny that people use and abuse of internet based services and devices that actually have little or no protection againt attacks...
What people expect? Connect a tv/pc/whatever to internet, many even do this directly without some NAT firewall, with a bunch of ports opened and expect the best? Good luck with that!
Can't even call it hacking.
If you are going through a router then you should be protected from such abuse, it is only frequenters of the dark web (like yourself) that cause these issues so please do not try blaming the general public for correctly using the equipment they are supplied with. Of course yes it is still hacking, it is also theft of their bandwidth and subscriptions, you cannot legitimize such actions, so do not even try
 
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