virus alerts

Question

Lately, I've been receiving virus alert messages from Norton Anti-Virus Auto Protect whenever I visit a website. These virus alerts appear only when I search the internet for a specific file. For example, I will go to yahoo and search for something like song.mp3 or document.txt. I know that this is not advisable to search the Internet this way. What I am concerned with is the fact that I get to what would seem to be a legitimate page based on the description of the page in yahoo search results, I get a virus alert. The first message I get is an alert that a virus has been detected on my system. The second message I receive is that access to the file has been denied. The third message I get is that the file has been deleted. I'm concerned that even though I keep the virus definitions up to date and have firewall protection in addition to having ad-aware, how do I know that these viruses have actually been removed from the system and haven't done any kind of damage? I have done a full system scan using Norton Anti-virus on my system and nothing has been found. How do I know that one of these viruses hasn't disabled some part of the anti-virus software so that it would appear that no viruses are on the system.

dunedin · Answer

Hi,
First thing to do is run an online virus scan as a double check
Try both of these
Panda http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

Trend Micro Housecall http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Run this scan too in case there is a trojan
Trojan Scan http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/

Let them fix all problems they find.

If anything is found take note of the name in case we need to look for damage to repair

c_brookhart · Answer

Scanning is in progress (Panda ActiveScan). So far, it has found 4 infections. :smileysad:

It looks like something in the registry might be infected, which is probably not good. I'm wondering though how through an enabled firewall and up to date virus definitions and with auto protect on, how the viruses would get through.

I'll post more details about the scan results once it's finished.

c_brookhart · Answer

A total of 10 infections were found, which breaks down to 4 viruses and 6 spyware issues. The registry had spyware infection. Based on the report summary it would appear that the Panda ActiveScan removed the viruses and spyware. The viruses were low risk and seemed to be associated with allowing a hacker to run malicious programs on my computer through the use of Window Virtual Machine. I've been doing critical updates on Windows and now the only thing left is SP2.

I'll run ad-aware and see what is found, if anything.

twl845 · Answer

I don't know your set up, but it has been my experience that NA has become garbage. More trouble than it's worth. I ripped it out of my pc and installed ZoneAlarm Security Suite with good results. PCillon (spelled wrong I think)gets good reviews too. Any antivirus program that misses 10 infections should be replaced.

chuket · Answer

For spyware, you might want to try the MS β version of their new spyware program: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

c_brookhart · Answer

The anti-virus program DID catch the viruses by displaying an alert and then stating that the file had been deleted. The viruses seem to be just in the temporary internet files area and are low-risk so I guess no damage was done.

Windows General

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