Hi, moved to the
Am I Infected forum from MRL ~~ boopme
I'm afraid I have very bad news.
Your system is infected with a nasty variant of
Virut, a dangerous
polymorphic file infector with
IRCBot functionality which
infects .exe, .scr files, and
opens a back door that
compromises your computer. Using this backdoor, a remote attacker can access and instruct the infected computer to download and execute more malicious files.
-- Note: As with most malware infections, the threat name may be different depending on the anti-virus or anti-malware program which detected it. Each security vendor uses their own naming conventions to identify various types of malware.With this particular infection, the safest solution and only sure way to remove it effectively is to reformat and reinstall the OS.
Why? According to this
Norman White Paper Assessment of W32/Virut, some variants can infect the
HOSTS file and block access to security related web sites. Other variants of virut can even penetrate and infect .exe files within compressed files (.zip, .cab, rar). The
Virux and
Win32/Virut.17408 variants are an even more complex file infectors which can embed an iframe into the body of web-related files and infect script files (.php, .asp, .htm, .html, .xml). When Virut creates infected files, it also creates non-functional files that are corrupted beyond repair and in some instances can disable Windows File Protection. In many cases the infected files
cannot be disinfected properly by your anti-virus. When disinfection is attempted, the files become corrupted and the system may become
irreparable. The longer virut remains on a computer, the more critical system files will become infected and corrupt so the degree of damage can vary.
The virus disables Windows File Protection by injecting code into the "winlogon.exe" process that patches system code in memory.
The virus has a number of bugs in its code, and as a result it may misinfect a proportion of executable files....some W32/Virut.h infections are corrupted beyond repair.
McAfee Risk Assessment and Overview of W32/VirutThere are bugs in the viral code. When the virus produces infected files, it also creates non-functional files that also contain the virus...Due to the damaged caused to files by virut it's possible to find repaired but corrupted files. They became corrupted by the incorrect writing of the viral code during the process of infection. undetected, corrupted files (possibly still containing part of the viral code) can also be found. this is caused by incorrectly written and non-function viral code present in these files.
AVG Overview of W32/VirutVirut is
commonly spread via a
flash drive (usb, pen, thumb, jump)
infection using
RUNDLL32.EXE and other malicious files. It is often
contracted by visiting remote,
crack and
keygen sites. These type of sites are
infested with a smörgåsbord of malware and a major source of system infection.
...warez and crack web pages are being used by cybercriminals as download sites for malware related to VIRUT and VIRUX. Searches for serial numbers, cracks, and even antivirus products like Trend Micro yield malcodes that come in the form of executables or self-extracting files...quick links in these sites also lead to malicious files. Ads and banners are also infection vectors...
Keygen and Crack Sites Distribute VIRUX and FakeAVHowever, the
CA Security Advisor Research Blog have found
MySpace user pages carrying the malicious Virut URL. Either way you can end up with a computer system so
badly damaged that recovery is not possible and it cannot be repaired. When that happens there is nothing you can do besides
reformatting and reinstalling the OS.
Since
virut is not effectively disinfectable, your best option is to perform a full reformat as there is
no guarantee this infection can be completely removed. In most instances it may have caused so much damage to your system files that it cannot be completely cleaned or repaired. In many cases the infected files (
which could number in the thousands)
cannot be deleted and anti-malware scanners cannot disinfect them properly. Security vendors that claim to be able to remove file infectors
cannot guarantee that all traces of it will be removed as they may not find all the remnants. If something goes awry during the malware removal process there is always a risk the computer may become unstable or unbootable and you could loose access to all your data.
Further, your
machine has likely been compromised by the
backdoor Trojan and there is no way to be sure the computer can ever be trusted again.
It is dangerous and incorrect to assume the computer is secure even if your anti-virus reports that the malware appears to have been removed.
Many experts in the security community believe that once infected with this type of malware, the
best course of action is to reformat and reinstall the OS. Reinstalling Windows without first wiping the entire hard drive with a repartition and/or format will not remove the infection. The reinstall will only overwrite the Windows files. Any malware on the system will still be there afterwards. Please read:
Whenever a system has been compromised by a backdoor payload, it is impossible to know if or how much the backdoor has been used to affect your system...There are only a few ways to return a compromised system to a confident security configuration. These include:
• Reimaging the system
• Restoring the entire system using a full system backup from before the backdoor infection
• Reformatting and reinstalling the system
Backdoors and What They Mean to YouThis is what security expert
miekiemoes has to say:
Virut and other File infectors - Throwing in the Towel?If I guide someone with Virut (or any other File Infector) present and their Antivirus cannot properly disinfect it, then I recommend a format and reinstall...dealing with such infections is a waste of time and that's why I prefer the fastest and safest solution - which is a format and reinstall...After all, I think it would be irresponsible to let the malware "stew" (download/spread/run more malware) for another couple of days/weeks if you already know it's a lost case.
This is what
Jesper M. Johansson at Microsoft TechNet has to say:
Help: I Got Hacked. Now What Do I Do?.
The only way to clean a compromised system is to flatten and rebuild. That’s right. If you have a system that has been completely compromised, the only thing you can do is to flatten the system (reformat the system disk) and rebuild it from scratch (reinstall Windows and your applications).
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