Author: Alastair Scott
Date: 23:20:39 09/20/03
Go up one level in this thread
On September 20, 2003 at 15:09:37, David Mays wrote:
>Two days ago I opened an attachment from what I thought was Microsoft update
>patch, since i have been in living hell trying to get rid of it, first the virus
>completely destroyed Norton Internet security, when I try to access Norton I get
>a phony error exception message, I noticed that suddenly my outlook express went
>haywire and started randomly mailing to who I don't know. Eventually I was able
>to uninstall norton security and reinstall, I then ran the virus scan which
>detected 9 virus which have been cleaned from the system, the damaged to my
>system that I can so far see is that I have this daily Adult movies pORN iCON ON
>MY dESKTOP, i HAVE RAN Adware removal about twenty times but the Same 182 bugs
>found keep reappearing even after i delete them, I discovered they magically
>appear whenever i start up internet explorer, i do a rescan and the same 182
>bugs that were there before come back. Also I no longer have access to System
>Restore, whenever i try to access it the area is completely missing from the box
>it should be at and I get an error message. Also I cannot even run Regedit from
>the Startup button. Therefore I cannot even execute the number 1 instructtion
>on the norton site for removal, which is to turn off system restore. I know
>this is not the forum for this question but I saw some post from mike byrne he
>seemed to have the same problem, also i have been getting dozens of emails from
>microsoft with the virus attached, Help please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One trick is to not run "conventional" virus checkers and firewalls (I mean the
McAfees and Nortons) as worms and viruses tend to try to disable them because
they are quite likely to be installed. Their owners also tend to be quicker at
getting virus signatures out than the big boys; there is a _big_ problem with AV
protection as the signature has to be in place before the virus strikes. (As you
found).
I use Kerio Personal Firewall - http://www.kerio.com/ - and F-Prot -
http://www.f-prot.com/.
As Sally points out, Spybot Search and Destroy http://security.kolla.de/ is an
astonishing package, removing all manner of horrors.
Another little-known package is Stinger (http://vil.nai.com/vil/averttools.asp).
It is essentially a cut-down version of McAfee AntiVirus, in one file, and
allows common viruses to be removed very easily. It has just been updated for
the virus ("Swen") your PC contracted.
That said, if there are 182 files supposedly infected there is (ahem) a real
problem. It may well be that SS&D/Stinger/anything else cannot completely repair
such a large and diverse list of files, so the only real solution would be to
reinstall Windows from scratch.
Finally, I would ditch Outlook Express. It is the easy choice for an email
package, being there by default, but it is precisely because it is known to be
there that it is frequently attacked .... and there are far more capable
packages around anyway! I use Thunderbird (http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/).
(Be sure to remove all the email addresses from the Outlook Express Address Book
- Thunderbird can import them beforehand).
Alastair
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