Hey so a few weeks ago I reformatted pc and forgot to install eset (very dumb just kinda forgot about it since it's so great at being in the background), a few days ago I was hacked and slowly lost control of everything on the computer, it appeared the person was able to record and log everything to his own device or computer from my computer and then took away my own access to every program and I was an administrator before this began then ended up having no authority or security when I was the only owner of this computer. He also hacked my roommates phone to the point of not being to use his own service plan until he factory reset it, I may add it was a phone (samsung lite) which had been showing signs of monitoring and remote access by someone for a long time but we both thought it was just us being a bit paranoid.
Well this phone was acquired through a former friend of my roommate who lives with me and got hacked while I was being hacked on my computer. The person we got it from used to be a tech guy and was pretty knowledgable in the tech world and gave it to him as a gift which didn't seem strange at all, just a nice gesture because my friend had lost his old one. We started noticing extreme battery use, voice memo popping up, volume changing, microphone activation logs,screen not responding to the correct thing when clicked, random autocalling etc. My roommate eventually looked online and went through his processes and it was loaded with hidden apps that could access his mic,camera,apps, etc without him knowing. He saw all the weird activity and tried getting antispy apps etc. but I know nothing of smartphones and he relied on me for tech questions but I only know computers mainly. He did not get a new phone (which i highly suggested) because he was ignorant to the risk and severity of this newfound knowledge and I told him that the guy he got it from was possibly hoping to get some sort of bank or tax info but other than that was unsure what incentive there was to betray my roommate. We both didn't do the obvious thing and get it fixed at the phone store or traded or thrown out because it was hard to prove our suspiscions enough to justify buying a new phone so we just kept ignoring it.
So about 2 weeks ago my friend plugged this phone into an old computer that wasn't connected to monitor or anything, just plugged in usb to charge it, we both thought nothing of it until this whole event. I believe the phone accessed our network and from there infected my computer since I hadn't reinstalled eset. The night it happened my friend found tons of logs of me and him just talking that week in our living room while watching tv or random times which made me really uncomfortable when I listened to my voice on these logs in the privacy of my own him knowing and I've never felt so exposed and violated, I like to keep to myself and refused to upgrade from a flip phone because that is just my preference and I always stood by this, I avoid social media, website accounts unless I have to, paperless billing, banks/credit unions etc. because I think someday we will regret letting technology advance so fast when human history shows a clear pattern of jumping on the coolest thing only to realize the effects on the earth later (industrial revolution,trains,cars,phones,atom bomb, satellites, cigrattes, pesticides....you get the idea) and here I was being listened to by some freak in my own house, still feel sick from it. I like the old ways before all this smartphone interrconnected world happened and I always got mild jokes thrown at me for being "off the grid" to an extent and hey I even thought I was just swimming upstream and should give in until this. He hadn't used voice memo or anything during that whole time, so I went to my computer to start checking my settings for security risks. I guess whoever infected us noticed my sudden changes to my settings or listened to my concern through his phone (we still didn't think this type of monitoring was real and couldn't understand how we were important to anyone to waste time listening to us) because I quickly ended up in an 8 hour losing "battle" to save my computer and kick out the intruder. At first I made basic changes to location, sharing services etc, then moved on to certificates and noticed users named "Owner Controller", "Anonymous user" and tried my best to make my profile the only one allowed to access it but for all I know I made it worse. As it progressed I started seeing my mouse moving and different applications opening and and I tried to view permissions to access folders, look up what processes were malware or viruses, checking my certificates for hidden programs and by the end of it I wasn't able to open any file, the computer moved very slow and it said the index was off and my drives were all over the place. I literally had my hard drive filled up with logs and had 0 BYTES(yes bytes!) left out a terabyte of memory when I only used 100 gigs of tops, so I couldn't save these logs without plugging in an external but I just wanted it off the comp so I wipeed it. Also the firewall wouldn't let me access anything or go on the internet and basically had an unusable computer which I was not allowed to use. The logs I read had dated back to the day my friend charged his phone and showed from what I could interpret signs of monitoring and changing security and file settings and somehow making a shared or templog or remote access folder that let him get all my files and make them accessible to him but I couldn't find where the files were being hidden until i was left with the terabyte of logs all leading to "en-US0" that was the main common name on them and it seemed it all went to "appdata,apps,and tempfilees" whatever that is. During this time the person was moving both my files to my friends phone and his files to mine which was embarassing because I had pictures of my ex on there which were not to be shared and it just seemed like whoever did this wanted to add insult to injury, oh well.
Anyway I reinstalled windows and installed eset and I need answers to how this is possible, if this was the person who gave him the phone or a random government agency or foreign hacker who has some sick ways of finding entertainment or what. The only thing I could think of that would imply government is I enjoy conspiracy videos and reading things about cover-ups and ancient civilizations but me and 100 million other people do that too i dont have a blog or do anything but read and think about it myself I'm the smallest fish in that pond. I don't have bank accounts,credit cards, no social media of any kind and don't know what made them decide I was some sort of risk? I mainly use my computer to listen to music or watch youtube videos these days because I'm busy with work.
The friend also gave me an ipod touch which was connected and likely infected me long ago, in attempt to destroy it I submerged it in water it still made noises like I was opening home screen it for several hours every 15-20 minutes and at one point lit up while i was in bed, maybe looking on the camera or using the microphone i don't know...just really was sick of it at that point and put it in a drawer.
I apologize for having no logs saved which would be the most useful thing right now but I just wanted my computer back to functional and reformatted it. My roommate has since gotten rid of his phone but we want to know who would do this, if this is a common story for some sort of virus we may have gotten, or if this was more serious than we still realize and what actions we should take for complete network/computer/device security. I also notice a drive (D:/) that I can't access which didn't used to be there after reseting windows and it says 304mb/349mb used when there's no external drive plugged in and eset no threats found.
PLEASE HELP this has wasted so much of my time, embarrassed me, made us both uncomfortable, and just plain confused as to why, never heard of this before it seems more like a sci-fi movie plot than reality, they had all sorts of pre-designed programs running for a week so it was someone very professional at this type of thing.
Any questions I'll gladly answer I am more knowledgable than the average person on computers so I was able to get some understanding of what the logs said but there were so many files that I didn't have a program to open them with that I only got to see notepad. I will also add there was one certificate on my computer from apple that was created a few months ago when I got the ipod from this person and didn't match any online and only had 1 year of being valid, no other certs were under personal and it seemed very strange to me so I hope that helps.
