computer virus warning

[D Duk]

As a warning to you out there, my new Grisoft AVG picked up a Hantaner A virus in my system which apparently is being distributed through the Kazaa and other peer to peer networks. It is designed to replace all of your .exe files in your shared directories with itself and then spread out through the peer to peer network.

IMHO, I believe this virus was designed by software manufacturers 'cause only a stupid hacker would design something that will kill the very source of his "free software".

Anyway, this virus did actually escape out of my shared directory and so severely infected my system I had to do a system wipe.

To add to the problems, I have encountered a hacker who had slid into my system and deposited 6 Gb of data that he kept encrypted. I believe this is becoming more popular with hackers as a method of increasing their storage space and keeping content that could get them arrested off of their computers. Anyway, the hacker has been trying to hack in again ever since I figured out something was up but it is a waste of his time as the content has been erased.

This hacker also embedded spyware in my system (actually took passwords and ID from some of my online accounts) and lastly embedded some code that was re-directing my new Norton internet protection package to a site that had bad updates that would turn off Norton Firewall and lock up Norton in my system and forced me to redo a system wipe to try to re-install a "clean" version of Norton.

This code was not picked up by any AVG scanner that I have tried and I had to tinker with the files to finally get clean re-direction to updates.

Lesson learned from this one, guess no more Kazaa and 24/7 internet access for this buy anymore.

Lovely world we live in now.

 

[Hit Man]

D Duk, I can't find anything about that virus on symantec's web site. Is there some on another site?

 

[pizzapest]

Newsgroups are ok, but everything is encoded.

I prefer IRC. Its not just for chat anymore.

 

[Hit Man]

Thanks Alex. I finally found it on Symantec also. Looks pretty nasty.

 

[Urban_Male]

D Duk,

Try placing a firewall infront of your system. Application ones work pretty good, but if you really want a safe zone create a DMZ(Demilitirized Zone). Buy an old computer nothing fancy and make it into a physical firewall.

Hope this helps.
Urban

 

[Urban_Male]

Oh D Duk, one more thing. If you are still interesed in downloading music, videos, and what not. And you dont' want to use Kazaa or any other peer to peer. There will always be good old mIRC.

It works and it's safe.

 

[pizzapest]

For P2P, I suggest using Warez P2P. No cap download speeds, haven't downloaded a bad file ever, no spyware.

Another program to rid yourself of unknown hijackers and such is Pest Patrol.

 

[Hit Man]

Is it still free VM? I run it every morning after I surf. Seems to work great.

 

[spaceghost]

I had two friends who had their Norton do it's 'liveupdate' and they encountered all kinds of problems... basically their internet (on explorer) slowed right down to a standstill, as did the Norton Internet security and Virus protection.

One was on Shaw, the other Telus.

The telus user does not do any peer to peer sharing.

Telus support advised that various users had reported similar problems that day and, in Telus support's opinion, the problem was related to Norton. They recommended erasing Norton and reloading.

This seemed to resolve both their problems.

Should they be concerned with someone having gained access to their systems?

 

[hitrack]

Get a firewall or a router. A linksys box is so cheap theres just no excuse not to have one.

 

[pizzapest]

you can also protect your computer by using system restore and the crappy XP firewall.

As far as the slow downs on the Norton live update, make sure you change the default time to download updates. Leaving at default means your trying to download when 90% of those who auto update are also trying. It wouldn't matter how fast your connection speed is, when a million customers are trying to download from one site, its going to be slow.

 

[hitrack]

Was anyone else pissed off that the "free" version of Norton Sysytem works 2004 had more friggen numbers to enter than bill gates's tax forms.

 

[lb12]

But.. it was *free*, right?

maybe you should hire someone to punch in those numbers!

 

[spaceghost]

As far as the slow downs on the Norton live update...

The slowdown didn't occur during the update... after the update, doing anything on the Internet was like the computer had suddenly been hooked up to a 28.8 modem (slower, in fact). I mean, it was un real. Things stayed like this for two days.

Both of them had this problem. I don't know if 'update' loaded incorrectly and suddenly consumed massive amount of 'puter resources, or what.

Removing and reloading the program seemed to have solved this problem.

Both have Norton firewalls. I was just concerned about the initial post that indicated something got into the puter and turned off the firewall through 'bad updates'.

 

[afreet1444]

To SpaceGhost and D Duk

Someone told me Norton Anti-Virus takes up 30% off Comp memory!! Is this true ? How about the free AVG anti-virus is it good enough to protect? He also mentioned that sygate firewall are the best..
I got rid off NIS cause it always slowed down the machine

 

[Hit Man]

Evidently the AVG D Duk was running was not updated. Since Symantec's websice indicates it came out on, or about, March 8, it should have caught it. Mine evidently did, although, in all fairness, I don't file share. I have used the free AVG for over 2 years and no problems. I just took VM's advice and updated to the new version of Spybot (downloads.com) and it rocks.

 

[afreet1444]

Thanks Hitman cause I wanna delete this Norton Anti-Virus...

 

[D Duk]

Yeah, Norton has become a big dog of a commercialized program with lots of malicious code out there designed to take it down.

I had all of the updates from Norton and what triggered all this mayhem was someone stealing my online account passwords and using my private email address to send out viruses. That's when I heard of spyware and heard that the new norton has adware and spyware algorithms.

When I installed the new version, I had a system crash and upon researching the problem found out that the new norton does not operate properly if some adware or spyware is already resident on the system.

I installed spy-bot and x-cleaner to try to scan and rid the stuff (lavasoft ad-aware) was a piece of garbage when it comes to the new spyware and adware. The two programs found a lot of stuff but the new norton still would not install right so I decided to do the sure shot thing of hard drive formatting and restoration of the system. That solved my problem on one computer. The other one required more work.

Due to the immense amount of data I was trying to backup, I had to use a slave hard drive in my main computer. Formatted the sucker, checked it with my clean computer, transferred data to it then formatted the main drive on the remaining computer.

The re-install of the os went fine but norton would still not integrate properly (somewhere malicious code was still circulating in the system. Both the updated Grisoft AVG and Norton initial install scanner did not pick up anything and yet the new norton was getting corrupted updates.

The fix was to wipe out the update file lists resident in the computer and let the program start off the new updates from scratch and not use any resident update lists.

Bottom line is that I had and still have all of the latest updates to the major programs and I still got fried. Grisoft AVG lacks adware and spyware algorithms as the new norton picked up stuff that the Grisoft didn't and the Grisoft picked up the Hantaner A which the Norton didn't.

Also FYI, I am behind a Linksys router with hardware firewall as well as software firewalls on my computers and I still got fried. The attacks have eased up lately probably 'cause this hacker realizes that I erased his 6 GB of secret shite.

In summary, nothing is bulletproof! Whatever the malicious code was that is still likely partially resident in my computer is not something that has been documented yet IMHO and is likely the cause of all the problems with the new Norton (all the insiders say it is crap because of conflict problems, I think it is more because of this undocumented malicious code).

Anyway, just thought you folks would like to know about all this other malicious computer code that can make your life miserable.

Later...

 

[williewheeler]

hmmmm..... I've been using a Macintosh since 1984, and yet to have a serious virus infection. I have a firewall, and Norton SystemWorks installed, and I've never (touch wood, I know I'm just inviting someone to take me on here) had a problem. it seems that hackers, like most program developers, think that Windows is the only operating system, and that PC is the only platform. Plus, OSX for Mac is so close to Linux, so if you are at all computer savvy, you can go into Linux to check out the health of your computer. The only problem I've had is that MSN Chat doesn't support Mac platforms....

 

[afreet1444]

Thanks D Duk . All sounds scary now