The other day I got a file from one of my Chilean friends from overseas asking me what I thought of her picture. I felt kind of sketchy about opening it because it came in a folder, instead of a smaller picture that you normally see when people upload photos to your msn. So yea, I opened the stupid thing and sure enough, the problems arose. It immediately spammed everyone else on my MSN contact list and offered them the same myspace picture file. Then it closed down all of my chat windows and disallowed me from chatting with anyone else. I was forced to log off and log back on in order to be able to chat with anyone else. When I did log on again, about 20-30 mins later it would spam everyone on my list again, trying to upload them the virus. One of my friends accepted it and fell into the same hole as me. Since I figured it was probably a trojan, I began downloading cleaning agents as well as virus removers. I tried about 6 or 7 different ones, accessing them in safe mode, deleting suspicious files, and everything else you can think of, only to no avail. Nothing seemed to work and I felt left with only one option; reformatting my comp, somthing I did not wish to do at that time. So before pulling the plug, I remembered there was one virus scanner I hadn’t tried yet, Norton, so I found a free 2k4 15 day trial and gave that a shot. Surpisingly enough, the Norton Anti Virus was the only one that was able to pick up the trojan horse. It makes me wonder if the virus came from the Norton Anti-virus, and it was their own little scam to get people to suscribe to them. Anyhow… I’m just glad that I don’t have anyone spying on me anymore and things are back to normal, for the time being.
Oct
27
A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself[1] and infect a computer. The term “virus” is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.[2][3]
As stated above, the term “computer virus” is sometimes used as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware, even those that do not have the reproductive ability. Malware includes computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware and other malicious and unwanted software, including true viruses. Viruses are sometimes confused with worms and Trojan horses, which are technically different. A worm can exploit security vulnerabilities to spread itself automatically to other computers through networks, while a Trojan horse is a program that appears harmless but hides malicious functions. Worms and Trojan horses, like viruses, may harm a computer system’s data or performance. Some viruses and other malware have symptoms noticeable to the computer user, but many are surreptitious or simply do nothing to call attention to themselves. Some viruses do nothing beyond reproducing themselves.