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Anti-virus software
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Well, our outlook inbox has caught some kind of weird virus. We keep on recieving the same mails. Especially one re-sends itself like 9 times a day or so.
Our Norton couldn't track it, so we downloaded something else. This did find 4 infected files, but couldn't disinfect them for some weird reason.
Anyone knows any anti-virus software which is worth trying?
Thanks
Our Norton couldn't track it, so we downloaded something else. This did find 4 infected files, but couldn't disinfect them for some weird reason.
Anyone knows any anti-virus software which is worth trying?
Thanks
0
Comments
If you system says its clean but is still acting like this you could try the following.
Delete your signitures in outlook
empty your recycle bin
delete all your inbox (all messages that have been sent to you)
put 'rem' in front of any dodgy looking lines inthe autoexec.bat
If you're not confident or sure of what your doing, its more helpful if you tell us the subject line of this reappearing message. This can tell us what virus it is, and from that we know the method of cleaning it.
If you want to be sure of not getting email bourn virii try not using MS outlook or outllook express, because most of the email virii exploit weakness's that are only in these products.
Well, we downloaded this program called RAV antivirus. Found 5 infected files. And apperently it's all gone now
1) Disconnect the compuer from any network and turn it off
2) Use Anti-virus bootdisks (write protected) and start your machine with them in, ensure the virus definitions are up-to-date or at least within a month block.
3) After its been cleaned, run a full sweep inside windows using say McAfee and make sure everythings sorted
.... and apart from that, keep all your virus definitions for your virus software are kept up-to-date (ie. within a month)
... and make sure you keep up-to-date with any security updates released from Microsoft (for both Windows and Outlook) which can either be found via the 'Windows Update' or:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/
... lastly, don't open attachments with extentions you don't recognise or suspect of being viruses:
ie. annakornicova.jpg.jps or thesite.gif.vbs
For Virus protection, I prefer McAfee over Symantec (or Norton) as McAfee is owned by a company called Network Associates (NAI) and is basically a merge both McAfee and Dr.Solomons! As well as that, Symantec products have a habit of writing themselves all over the windows registery and causing all manor of problems.. especially if something goes wrong on your system!
Get yourself a copy of AVG Free Edition from http://www.grisoft.com
This is consistently far more effective in detecting and removing viruses in independant tests than Norton or similar anti-virus products. It is one of the best, and, as said, it is Free for personal use on a single computer.
Anyone reading this who doesn't have a top-notch anti-virus solution already installed, click the link NOW!
Its not a thing you can put off until you need it. Many of the recent viruses that have been widespread will prevent you from downloading from, or even opening, the sites of any main anti-virus provider.
AVG will scan all your incoming and outgoing emails, as well as scan both your system and your surfing sessions. In all, it is one of the safest and best solutions available.
You need anti-virus. It doesn't just protect you, because if you do get infected with any worm type virus, that virus will mail itself out to everyone you know with your name. Anyone who trusts you will be infected. Prevent that now.
The trouble with NAI is they're fearmongering, media manipulating bastards.
Just my opinion, mind.
Any-one hear about the "new virus" that embeds itself into jpg images? The one that was created by NIA and has not been released into the wild but still got a press conference and a good few column inch's?
The conferance and column inch's that probabily prompted a good few people to go out and purchase NAI products...
The one that doesn't even do what they imply it does...
For more look here http://Vmyths.com but don't sign up to their announcements, cos its more advertising than sending useful infomation.
I'm waiting for an antivirus product that stops and deletes hoax virus warnings. In my opinion these are much more dagerous and prolific, because virii rely on security loopholes and vunribilities, of which there are a finite amount.
Hoax's rely on people stupidity, which seems to be infinite....:D
Delete your signitures in outlook, empty your recycle bin, delete all your inbox (all messages that have been sent to you), put 'rem' in front of any dodgy looking lines inthe autoexec.bat
You don't have to do any of these, its not necessary, you can check up with NAI or Symantec with this if you wish. Advising putting REM on any 'dodgy' lines in the autoexec.bat isn't sensible either, most people here wouldn't know what all of the lines are and you could cause them to stop there machine working.
Any-one hear about the "new virus" that embeds itself into jpg images? The one that was created by NAI
Your refering to the 'W32/Perrun' virus and if you read more carefully I think you'll find it wasn't actually created by NAI and just documented and press released by them.
http://www.itworld.com/Sec/2199/020624jpegvirus/
Another interesting thing about this virus and I quote:
""Not only is this virus not in the wild, but also graphic files infected by this virus are completely and utterly harmless, unless they can find an already infected machine to assist them," said Chris Wraight of Sophos Plc. "It's like a cold only being capable of making people who already have runny noses feel ill."
"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/25718.html
Hardly something to worry about I think you'll agree. The JPEG virus is pretty hard to propogate and isn't a concern
What else is there... ohh yeah... well done for posting VMyths, its certainly a good site, basically anything which says "please email this to everyone in your address book" is usually either a chain letter or hoax email... hardly dangerous! Just annoying!
If you want to be sure of not getting email bourn virii try not using MS outlook or outllook express, because most of the email virii exploit weakness's that are only in these products.
False... yes its true some virii do exploit secuirty protection flaws in Outlook by taking advantage of COM (Componant Object Model) which works from IE and basically when you recieve a HTML type email the OM in Outlook tries to execute it with IE, if it finds its a EXE/VBS/JPS it still tries to execute it and so infects the machine.
Many email programs run using this COM method, its not just genetric to Outlook and remember thats just one type of virus. Many, many viruses including as the famous 'ILOVEYOU' relied on users actually clicking on the attachment... hense infecting themselves... so in that situation it wouldn't matter what email client they used..
So like I said, be careful if your opening attachments by checking the end of the file information:
ie. annakornavoca.jpg.vbs
Delete your signitures in outlook, empty your recycle bin, delete all your inbox (all messages that have been sent to you), put 'rem' in front of any dodgy looking lines inthe autoexec.bat
would be good if you're virus scanner says it cannot find the files, or finds them but you get reinfected.
del sigs : hybris i think, but can't be botherd to check
empty recycle bin : sircam
delete your inbox : fairly good, if somewhat drastic action
put rem in autoexec : ok, you'll need to know the difference between a dodgy line and a merely unusual one, but even if you rem every thing the machien should still start.
Any-one hear about the "new virus" that embeds itself into jpg images? The one that was created by NAI
I heard these 2 things: It has not been caught in the wild. The only people who knew about it are NAI. I made a guess. You could be right though... the virii they write are prolly much more destructive and much more of a real threat tham this. You know the kind of thing... virii that will cause public panic, and make people buy more porduct.
Justin : just checking, you don't work for NAI...?
"please email this to everyone in your address book" is usually either a chain letter or hoax email... hardly dangerous!
I wouldn't call hoax emails harmless... Not many virii get into our company for 1 reason or another... but we do get a fair number of hoax's. We also have a large number of site permanantly connected by slow connections. Before we had words with the users and hoax's used to get passed around our company, we could see us lose all the users at a site because the bandwidth was almost entirely used up by copies of the hoax.
OK, I've just reread that and its not too clear... I hope you get my gist.
If you want to be sure of not getting email bourn virii try not using MS outlook or outllook express, because most of the email virii exploit weakness's that are only in these products.
Ok, useing non-MS products wont make you invunerable, but a large number of email bourne virii do still us MS only exploits. However ALL the virii I've heard of that send themselves to all you addressbook/ contacts do rely on MS features.
On another note : beware bad grammer. For whatever reason (prolly cos they've been translated from another language) emails that try to make you open the attachment yourself always seem to have very dodgy spelling and grammer.
Oh, and anything that SHOUTS more than it writes is a hoax. Even if the writer does not know it...