Bigfoot Posted May 5, 2009 #1 Posted May 5, 2009 (edited) First off. I have Norton 360 Anti-Virus on my laptop. Yesterday I was on Google looking for an address when all of the sudden my anti virus popped up warning me I had a trojan attacking my computer. It was called Trojan.win.agent32.azsy. This screen looked so much like my Norton that without thinking I clicked on whatever button was prompting me to push. It all looked legit then I was prompted to purchase additional anti virus protection to rid my PC of this attack. It was then I realized something was going on. I was getting pop ups with all kinds of warnings but I ignored them and googled the trojan mentioned above. Turns out this is an on-going problem which can cause some major problems if you don't get rid of it. I was able to purchase on line Spyware Doctor which was reported the best way to fix the problem. It did work for me but I also read that it doesn't always work. So beware when you start getting these pop ups and make certain they are legit before pushing any buttons. BTW. Norton did not stop the attack. If you Google Personal Antivirus you'll see what the exact problem is. Edited May 5, 2009 by Bigfoot
az1103 Posted May 5, 2009 #2 Posted May 5, 2009 I used to use Norton but grew to absolutely hate it!! Get McAfee - not only are they cheaper but according to Consumer reports they are better. From personal observation, once I got rid of Symantec (and it isn't easy) the computer runs much faster. Attacks are noted but instantly stopped - not a single incident simmilar to yours whereas with Norton it was happening regularly. I am using McAfee on two computers and so far I swear by them. And while you are at it switch from Explorer to Firefox - What a difference!!!!!
Aussie Annie Posted May 5, 2009 #3 Posted May 5, 2009 Thanks for the heads-up on the trojan Bigfoot, much appreciated :thumbsup2: _________________________________________________________________________ never ride faster than your guardian angel:2133:can fly
Ozark Posted May 5, 2009 #4 Posted May 5, 2009 Thanks for the post. I got the same virus last year and Spyware Doctor found it and isolated it. I tried Bit Defender, which found it, but couldn't do anything with it. It even got onto one of our computers at work yesterday, and we have a good anti-virus system in place. It took our I.T. guy a couple of hours to clean the mess up. Like you said, the warnings look official. The warning that came up on ours had the work "Windows" in it and looked like it was straight off a Micro Soft website.
ddoggma Posted May 5, 2009 #5 Posted May 5, 2009 www.superantispyware.com get this app. Its works good.
SaltyDawg Posted May 5, 2009 #6 Posted May 5, 2009 Good rule of thumb is to close all pop-ups with the X in the upper right corner. NEVER use any buttons within the pop-up. I used to have to rebuild my sons PC at least every other weekend because of that crap.
Monty Posted May 5, 2009 #7 Posted May 5, 2009 I think Norton is the worst antivirus tool out there. It can be completely removed easily by using their Norton Removal Tool. Google it. I use AVG, Superantispyware and Malwarebytes, and my system stays squeaky clean. I only use CCleaner for keeping the registry cleaned up.
stardbog Posted May 5, 2009 #8 Posted May 5, 2009 That's why i love my Mac. Still no known viruses for Mac. I'm using Mac for last 10 years and never bought any antivirus software. Five stars for Apple.
hdroyer Posted May 5, 2009 #9 Posted May 5, 2009 www.superantispyware.com get this app. Its works good. As ddoggma said this is a good one and free also avast Antivirus is free and is very good dose a boot scan of your puter gets every thing out before start up.
Vance Posted May 5, 2009 #10 Posted May 5, 2009 That's why i love my Mac. Still no known viruses for Mac. I'm using Mac for last 10 years and never bought any antivirus software. Five stars for Apple. Hopefully it wil stay that way, but I believe it is only a matter of time before some juvenile starts messing with Mac systems.
timgray Posted May 5, 2009 #11 Posted May 5, 2009 (edited) Good rule of thumb is to close all pop-ups with the X in the upper right corner. NEVER use any buttons within the pop-up. I used to have to rebuild my sons PC at least every other weekend because of that crap. get windows steadystate. you will never have to rebuild it again. a simple reboot and all are gone. It's great for kids computers. Never EVER pay for an Anti Virus program at home. Avast is free and rated higher than almost all AV software suites. it's at avast.com. The absolute best Antivirus out there right now is called nod32. They got the highest ratings from all the testing companies. 25 year vetran of computer consulting and engineering, I've been fighting that stuff for a quarter century now.... Oh and if you have a cablemodem or DSL. go out and buy a router. Even if you have only 1 computer. a router will act as a firewall and stop 95% the silent infection junk out there. Edited May 5, 2009 by timgray
ArcsSparks Posted May 5, 2009 #12 Posted May 5, 2009 ZONE ALARM is the best 39.95 a year and I never had a virus that it couldn't handle keeps you safe with inbound and outbound Data
timgray Posted May 5, 2009 #13 Posted May 5, 2009 Hopefully it wil stay that way, but I believe it is only a matter of time before some juvenile starts messing with Mac systems. MAC security is incredibly different from windows. it's not possible for a program to run on it's own. you have to click to run it, and then for it to infect the machine you will have to give it your administrator level username and password. so unless it completely fools you, it cant get in. There are other ways of attacking, but to write to system files it has to ask your permission. windows will gladly let a program write all over the system files quietly. Vista tried to fix this with UAC, but most people turn that off because windows software is designed to write to the system files too much (registry) so they see the popup quite a lot.
raceman62race Posted May 5, 2009 #14 Posted May 5, 2009 Here is what I do to prevent viruses. I have a desk top and a laptop. The laptop never goes on the internet and it has Windows and all of the Microsoft programs loaded on it that I use/need. The desk top has UBUNTU loaded on it which is a lynux based program. You can download UBUNTU from the internet for free and all of the software for UBUNTU is free and there are thousands of programs avalible for free download. It is a point and click system very simular to windows so if you can run a windows machine, you can run a UBUNTU machine. There is a program called Open office for UBUNTU that has the word processor, spread sheet, power point and E-mail supervisior much like Microsoft Office has for Windows and they are interchangeable......meaning you can write a spread sheet on a lynux machine using UBUNTU through Open Office and Microsoft Excel will open it just like it was originated in Excel and vise versa. Word and powerpoint are interchangeable as well. Being it is a lynux operating system, viruses don't seem to be able to affect it because most are targeted to Windows. It is also much faster than Windows. The only draw back to UBUNTU is the printer drivers. Most printers come wiht drivers that go on Windows machines. There are several drivers avalible for free download for a UBUNTU machine but not all printers have drivers avalible. Someone has to write a driver and make it avalible to the public. Anyone interested just do a google search for UBUNTU and you can go to the internet site to read more about it and download. I think you can download it over windows and if you don't like it, you can un install. I've been running UBUNTU for a couple of years with no virus protection and I haven't had any problems.
GaThumper Posted May 5, 2009 #15 Posted May 5, 2009 Good rule of thumb is to close all pop-ups with the X in the upper right corner. NEVER use any buttons within the pop-up. I used to have to rebuild my sons PC at least every other weekend because of that crap. I'm afraid to even click the "X" myself. I always wonder if they programmed it so that clicking the "X" (or anywhere in the pop-up) will activate the bad stuff! I usually right click on the button on the toolbar (bottom of the screen usually) and then click close. Or I'll and then select Task Manager and Applications and then close the window there.
similost Posted May 5, 2009 #16 Posted May 5, 2009 I make my living as a sys admin... I deal with this stuff daily because of ... well.. we'll just call them users.... Lose the Norton and McAfee.. both have very high overhead and just load up your system... Look to a program called AVG... VERY good antivirus, and the free version is MUCH BETTER than McAfee or Norton.. A great program also for free to remove most malware you can ever stumble on is called Malwarebytes... Both good stuff, and both free. I use it all the time for the real problem machines my users bring in from home as "favors"... they all have been happily ever after... I also use both of these at home and have for years... Never a problem...
similost Posted May 5, 2009 #17 Posted May 5, 2009 That's why i love my Mac. Still no known viruses for Mac. I'm using Mac for last 10 years and never bought any antivirus software. Five stars for Apple. Never say never... Always stay on top of the news... http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2009/04/22/Mac-users-note-new-computer-virus/UPI-73661240441079/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/01/another-mac-vir/
highwayrydr Posted May 5, 2009 #18 Posted May 5, 2009 AVG FREE. updates daily.. works great. Nortons sucks. NEVER download spyware doctor or anything like that as it is actually a spyware trojan itself.
similost Posted May 5, 2009 #19 Posted May 5, 2009 NEVER download spyware doctor or anything like that as it is actually a spyware trojan itself. I started to mention that... but I figured that would get to be a long drawn out discussion...
Red Ryder Posted May 5, 2009 #20 Posted May 5, 2009 Thanks for the heads up. I am on the computer all day. I use three programs, NoAdware in morning, run a scan before I do anything. Then I either let AVG run at set time, or I run Trend Micro House Call 6.5 Free Version http://housecall65.trendmicro.com/ but I Do Not download the free 30 day trial. Have a good friend, Anthony Keith, that has his own computer and webpage business and you can visit his site for some Free Downloads of virus protection, popup stoppers, and various Downloads http://www.atkcomputers.com/ Later-
Dave77459 Posted May 5, 2009 #21 Posted May 5, 2009 That's why i love my Mac. Still no known viruses for Mac. I'm using Mac for last 10 years and never bought any antivirus software. Five stars for Apple. Technically true, but misleading. "OSX.Trojan.iServices.A" is a trojan that targets Macs. So yes, it is not a virus, but it does target Macs. The way to be safe on any operating system is to avoid risky behavior.
SilvrT Posted May 5, 2009 #22 Posted May 5, 2009 get windows steadystate. you will never have to rebuild it again. a simple reboot and all are gone. It's great for kids computers. Never EVER pay for an Anti Virus program at home. Avast is free and rated higher than almost all AV software suites. it's at avast.com. The absolute best Antivirus out there right now is called nod32. They got the highest ratings from all the testing companies. 25 year vetran of computer consulting and engineering, I've been fighting that stuff for a quarter century now.... Oh and if you have a cablemodem or DSL. go out and buy a router. Even if you have only 1 computer. a router will act as a firewall and stop 95% the silent infection junk out there. timgray... what's your take on Kaspersky products?
Bigfoot Posted May 5, 2009 Author #23 Posted May 5, 2009 AVG FREE. updates daily.. works great. Nortons sucks. NEVER download spyware doctor or anything like that as it is actually a spyware trojan itself. Don't know if this is true regarding spyware or not but when researching on Google last night this was a recommended way to rid my PC of the Trojan and it worked. The suggestions coming from different people were all leading to spyware doctor as many of the other ways would not remove the problem.
SilvrT Posted May 5, 2009 #24 Posted May 5, 2009 I make my living as a sys admin... I deal with this stuff daily because of ... well.. we'll just call them users.... Lose the Norton and McAfee.. both have very high overhead and just load up your system... Look to a program called AVG... VERY good antivirus, and the free version is MUCH BETTER than McAfee or Norton.. A great program also for free to remove most malware you can ever stumble on is called Malwarebytes... Both good stuff, and both free. I use it all the time for the real problem machines my users bring in from home as "favors"... they all have been happily ever after... I also use both of these at home and have for years... Never a problem... I too make my living supporting computer users ... been at it since 1987 ... I've been using AVG now for so many years I can't remember....I highly recommend it. Avast is also equally as good and some report that it takes less system resources...I can't comment as I've never done an in-depth comparison.
saddlebum Posted May 5, 2009 #25 Posted May 5, 2009 I download the avg free version have used it for 5 years and never had a problem. I also set my machine up with user rights and never use administrator other than when actually working on the machine itself. Wether coinisdance or not I am not sure but I have had no problems since. I also was not happy with norton when i tried it.
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