this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Off-Topic Friday (infosec.pub)
submitted 6 months ago by shellsharks@infosec.pub to c/cybersecurity@infosec.pub
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[–] Twodozeneggs@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Greetings, I do a little IT support for an elderly neighbor (mostly fighting with her printer for her) and she recently fell for one of those fake Microsoft scams, and gave a scammer access to her laptop and hundreds of dollars worth of Nordstrom gift cards..

She's given me the laptop as she's afraid to open it. I'm thinking of formatting the HDs and reinstalling windows, she only uses the laptop for Internet browsing and email, so she's not worried about losing data.

Would this be enough to undo whatever the scammer would have done on the laptop?

Any considerations or advice would be appreciated. Apologies if this isn't an appropriate question for this forum.

[–] shellsharks@infosec.pub 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Almost certainly (though not impossible). Seriously doubt they went any deeper, i.e. rootkit, UEFI firmware / BIOS compromise, etc... There are likely files (pictures, documents) that your neighbor would not want to lose on their machine though so you should figure out how to get those off first.