atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories Virus or Worm maybe

This issue just happened to me this morning. Everyone in my address book received an email from me with subject of RE: I had not opened a single email this weekend nor sent anything. One person did open the email and open the attached link and it was a "Viagra Ad." That person was at my workplace and I asked IT to watch for issues but so far nothing. I will do the scans on my pc this evening.

Has anyone found anything else out about this issue and what it is that actually happened?

Rhonda ,just out of curiosity did your sent folder show these sent emails in there? It could have been something that harvested your contacts list and sent it from some other place than your PC.

I have also noticed that sometimes I have to run 3 or 4 different anti virus scan programs to find what is doing strange things.

I use the two programs mentioned previously, Zone Alarm from my ISP and https://housecall.trendmicro.com/. I figure if the four of them don't find anything, I must be clean.

I agree. About a million years ago, in computer-time, I had family members state that I had a computer virus because they were all getting weird emails from me,so for some reason the fingers pointed at me. :shrug:

In this case it was easy to discover which family member it was because I received the same email in two of my email accounts and he was the only person who had both accounts in his address book.

No one believe me until he updated his A-V program and then discovered an issue.

One thing to also keep in mind is that there's several other tricks spammers use to try to get through. One is called directory harvesting where they send emails starting with [email protected] and keep trying combinations all the way through [email protected] in the hopes of finding legitimate addresses. We get hundreds of thousands of those every single day but we use spam software at the server side to stop them all. Another tactic is to use someone's email address within the company as the sender and people are more likely to read the message or at least open it because they think its from someone they work with. Use several online scanners to check your pc and if all comes up clean its a safe bet that the spam did not originate form your pc. I recommend using Eset, Trend Micro, and Panda at the very minimum. They all have free online scanners available.

Tito!

How did you know my email address is: [email protected]? I suppose you also know my password is 9876543210

You are too clever for me!

Hold the phone!

Using multiple virus scanners is not the answer. There are some products that work well together, but multiple products that rely upon the same (limited) Windows resources will allow things to slip through. You are more well protected by one good program than you would be using multiple programs.

There are exceptions. Spybot was listed in a prior post, and it is a very good product. It is not something that runs continuously in the background, therefore it won't conflict with your primary virus protection.

The free version of MalwareBytes is also an excellent tool to keep in your arsenal. It, to, is a standalone product, not a process that continually runs, so it won't conflict with your anti-virus program. There is a paid version of MalwareBytes that we have tested with several antivirus products (Trend Micro, McAfee, Norton, etc.). Because it is an active shield, some products conflict with it, some don't.

We use, install and recommend the Avast anti-virus system, and we know it to not conflict with MalwareBytes, the free or paid versions.

By the way, there was an email marketing company broken into a few weeks ago (name escapes me) and potentially hundreds of thousands of email addresses were compromised. All you need to spoof the account is an address. It is very likely you were a victim of a breakin at a company you have never heard of, but because major retailers and major credit card companies use this firm, that is where your data was.

Of course on an AOL account, just change your password and see if that fixes the problem. If your account was hacked, selecting a new password should thwart further activity of this type.

Got my first known virus about a week ago.

XP Security 2011

Was a real pain, none of my scanners picked it up, Did a roll back and then anything that ended in .exe didn't work. Fortunately, it only cost me 45 minutes of frustration. Sure wish I knew which porn site goave it to me

No, those emails were not in my sent mailbox. I did get some undeliverable messages as some email addresses are dead and I hadn't cleaned them out yet.

I run Avest and it found nothing in the short nor long scans. I'll look into the othe options.

In the mean time, I killed that email adress and started a new one. Getting a new address out to everyone is a pain. I'm not going to make an address book as I don't send junk like I used to. That way there is no bank of addresses to get from me to scam on.

Oh, by the way, I've learned this type of scam is called "spoofing." It's called "hang the criminal by their toes" to me anyway.

I did not recommend installing more than one software package on the pc. She suspected that she might have an infection and its a good idea in that case to run ONLINE scans from several well known vendors just in case one has caught and updated their definitions where another has not. One thing that trips people up a lot is that they install antivirus software and unless it has a malware spyware grayware component then it will not catch most spyware infections. If you buy a package make sure it has that component. Another thing is that when you get free software like Malwarebytes and Superantispyware which are both popular and excellent tools, they don't include real time scanning in the free version. So even though you install it the program is not running after you close it and can offer zero protection from the initial infection. Of course these tricksters are always coming up with new schemes so even with the best protection in the world you can still get infected

I carry this file with me as part of my toolkit and its come in very handy.

https://windowsxp.mvps.org/exefile.htm

Trojan Remover is also an excellent piece of software that can repair the common registry entries that spyware disables. The free trial has full functionality.

https://www.simplysup.com

While the full package is a bit of a resource hog in my opinion this is an excellent piece of software.

https://www.malwarebytes.org

Another great remover but I prefer Malwarebytes.

https://www.superantispyware.com

And if you want to get serious about things you cant beat Regrun combines with Warrior. It is a bit pricey though

https://www.greatis.com/security/index.html