Seen this Virus?

[aibelectronics]

It's name is 'funny UST scandal' or something like that with a big foot for an icon. It's effect it seems is to create folders, each with size 247Kb on your system or your USB stick. If you had a folder named myFolder it will create a 247Kb sized folder within the parent folder with the same name. Going to properties shows that the replicated folder is an application and you can't open it.

Have you had an experience with it? How did you take care of it. Simply deleting it seems to make it go but you never can tell with these viruses...

 

[Marks256]

I run Linux!

No need to worry about viruses (unless you are stupid and log in as root all the time...)

 

[quixotron]

ehhhh...from my experience, i'd run norton/symantec anti-virus and have it quarantine it and/or remove it.

if its real buggy, like this adware i had, you might want to try loading a restore point, reformatting your hdrive and/or never connecting to the internet.

for great protection, i'd create weekly or daily rstore points, back up everything on a daily basis, especially with files that change constantly.

for best protection, keep two separate computers. one as the workhorse and the other to run separate from the internet. you scan files for malicious code and then transport it to your non-internet capable machine.

 

[Marks256]

DO NOT USE NORTON!!!!!!!!!!

Every time i get a machine with norton on it, i remove it, and put avg on it. The customers are ALWAYS happier. Norton can't find viruses that others can.

 

[Torben]

Norton is one of the worst products available. It uses way too many system resources and interferes with things too much. Plus it's damn hard to remove.

With so many better (and free) alternatives there is no reason to use it. Avast, Kaspersky, AVG, etc are all better, and are all free.


Torben

 

[Gayan Soyza]

In my office computer it has McAfee installed & well updated.& my home I have Kaspersky installed & well updated.

With those two products I have great experiences & No more viruses can beat me.

 

[aibelectronics]

Avg

AVG sure is good. It removed the whole stuff plus over 44 infected files on the USB Stick.
Moving to a Linux environment might be inevitable after all.

 

[arrie]

Unfortunately the latest AVG has come under the stick as well, and for taking up too much resources. But it's for free and works a charm on the nasties.
I would suggest running a serious antivirus app, as well as anti-spyware stuff.
One never knows what these thing do, I've had people bringing PC's to me where the malware would not go away, it would re-install itself after approx. 30 sec. after being removed. It took me three days to get the very hidden re-initialization app. That meant copious amount of time in Windows registry, yuck, and fiddling with services, processes, the lot.
I would not take anything that just inhibits your PC from the outside, and suddenly at that likely.
You never know, it might want to steal your identity, or worse, it might gather information about you for that clone that's supposed to replace you......
You never know........

Have you done a search with that name on the symantec website?
Funny, these guys always seem to know about a given virus.

 

[Marks256]

I do agree that the newest version of avg kinda sucks... I turned off the link scanner right away. I just shut off all things i didn't need.


Linux is still better, though...

 

[Torben]

Yeah, I just had to update AVG for a friend a few days ago. AVG 8 didn't make a great impression on me out of the gates, but we'll see how it fares down the track.

Personally I don't worry too much about it; I run Linux behind a firewall and don't expose services I don't need to. All exposed services are actually routed directly to a TS-7400 board, and aside from the ssh server, I wrote the daemons which monitor those ports--so I know what's going on in there.

At the end of the day the best protection is just to know how to surf safely. Every trojan, virus, or worm I've gotten has been right after I did something where I was thinking to myself "Gee, I really shouldn't do this, but just this once it can't hurt". And those were all on Windows.


Torben

 

[arrie]

Funny enough,

I've only had a internet based infection thingy once.
And if I recall it was visiting one of those warez/serialz/crackz kinda sites.
But I think surfing anywhere without decent protection would like spending a week having s..o..x with everything in you local brothel without protection.
that is dumb, stupid and everything bad
Once a chap called me, told me his PC is really slow and does funny things, and went there and immediately suspected a hidden bug.
I took his PC home, because all the required software was there for in depth analysis.
It ended up that PC being infected with just more that 1000 nasties. I ran a variety of tools to fix it up, and got it going, so I decided to check where the old dirty man is surfing to give him a good preaching.
Nothing weird, nothing too adult.
Did not find any anti-virus or anti-spyware installed, just windows firewall, ha..ha..ha..ha, so I just install some of the usual free stuff available.
Never heard of him again in that regard.
See, unprotected whatever can get you into a messy situation.
And not all bugs can be repaired either .......

 

[Torben]

Not true at all. I can do everything I need to do on the net without overly risking infection. This is not the same as saying that I can do everything I want to do. I can check email, Google, hit my work sites, etc and be fine. Of course, one of those sites could be infected--but the risk is about as low as it gets. But without protection, just surfing around is foolhardy, I agree.

Of course, this also presupposes that the OS is completely patched up. And it's not perfect. But simply having antivirus installed often gives people a false sense of security. Knowing how to surf smart is a more important tool.

That said, I usually have firewalls, antivirus, and regular malware checkers running regularly anyway. And I always recommend them for anyone who couldn't write their own polymorph worm.

And yes, all intrusions can be repaired. Wipe the drive and reinstall. And when I say "wipe", I mean the MBR too. That may seem drastic, but that's what backups are for.


Torben

EDIT: By the way, I totally agree that in general, surfing without protection is the internet equivalent of unsafe sex for your computer. You can minimize the risk but not eliminate it. However, you can use all the protection in the world and you are still not 100% safe. And warez sites are indeed especially bad for infection risk.

 

[arrie]

Sorry,
what I meant with some bugs cannot be repaired, if you have to format everything and start over, that's a bug that cannot be repaired.
If you can salvage windows and everything after a bug infection, that's a bug repaired.
I must also say, I have not received PC's with bugs that could not be destroyed in a very long time.
I just suppose most support/technical institutions would rather format than spend three days fighting a nasty.
Since I do not charge anyone for three days labour when fighting a bug, I see it as a personal challenge, to find all those nasty little tentacles (oops, almost selected a very similar but wrong word from the spell checker) and snub them out.
But then again, I do not always have time for that. These cases are far and few between, and I do not lend myself out to it regularly.
I'm traditionally a software developer.

 

[Torben]

I agree in one sense. I am also a software developer, and if the choice is between reformatting and spending three days coding and three days rooting out a virus or worm, I'll reformat and code.

Also I draw a line between the computer as a machine and the computer as the software which runs on it. I agree that you cannot always repair the software. And while I know that it is possible to destroy hardware with software, that is rarely done in modern malware. So if the malware is gone and the hardware is still OK, I've won.

That said, I myself should keep better backups.


Torben

 

[arrie]

Interesting, is there still malware that can destroy hardware these days?
Except of coarse wiping of flash type devices. Strictly speaking the chip is still fine, it just doesn't do anything any more.
I remember long time ago there was a virus, before the days of worms, adware, spyware, etc.
It caused the hard disk to continually read the inner most and outer most sectors of the disk, this would happen obviously at tremendous pace, end result, HDD motor burn-out.
Subsequent to this all, HDD manufacturers incorporated code to protect the devices from this happening.
Don't remember what they called the little bug though.

 

[HiTech]

DO NOT USE NORTON!!!!!!!!!!

Every time i get a machine with norton on it, i remove it, and put avg on it. The customers are ALWAYS happier. Norton can't find viruses that others can.

I whole heartedly disagree. While Norton is somewhat of a resource hog, it is effective. If you run the consumer versions, yes they are sub-par and you're better off with Macafee. However, Norton Corporate is a serious piece of software successfully used by many universities and businesses. I use it, I update it often, and I have no complaints. I have used AVG, and for a freebie it's adequate but not like Norton Corp. is. In fact AVG was such a PIA for me I removed it and sent it deep into the earliest moments of cyberspace! Most Internet freebies are plain doughnuts ... AVG Free is one of them. The subscription version is a different thing though. Remember that a good many viruses are created in mind with sneaking past or derailling the more popular AV software brands like Macafee or Norton. I admit that happened to me recently. Norton was bypassed with a nasty BHO/Trojan type file and it required AVG Free to catch and remove most of it onlyafter I used another machine to d/l it onto a memory stick for loading into the infected PC that couldn't load any web pages other than the malicous one.
After that, AVG missed numerous files that Norton quarantined with ease!

 

[colin mac]

Avira Antivir is free and better than AVG according to AV-comparitives.
I recommend trying it.

 

[arrie]

AVG 7.5 rated with the best of them when coming to crushing threats (independant tests).
One has to admit, Norton constantly features at or near the top in these same tests, as did f-secure and kaspersky.
I used kaspersky, loved it, but every year you have to fork out amounts that you wonder you it's justified compared to your previous subscription.
That was why I switched to AVG, more cost effective in the long run. I must admit I do not use AVG alone, running additional firewall software and additional spyware terminator software. Although all chunks memory, you really only feel it during computer, or should I say windows, start-up.
And I do not have nearly the latest spec PC. I just have a good amount of RAM piled on.
Lately AVG 8 is getting a lot of flak from a lot of corners, one can only wonder what went wrong.

 

[TRexall]

Seems there was a "virus" that would install itself on track 0 on the hard drive and render it useless..even a low level format couldn't remove it...can't recall the name tho

 

[Boomslang]

We use F-secure at work, and it's a piece of crap, we call it "F%^&-all secure"..

At home I am using Avast, and have no complaints so far.