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Mar. 10th, 2009 @ 05:50 pm 
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So, fun times are happening, and causing me some panic, which on reflection I realised I should have handled much better than I did. But I'm not required to be okay at all times, just learning and improving at all times, as far as mental health is concerned.
Recently, I put a thumb drive in an Alexander Library public computer.
When I put it in my own computer afterwards, AVG Anti-Virus threw up a warning for a virus in inf.exe, which it removed. All well and good.
Except when I then stuck that same thumb drive into a UWA library computer, Sophos Anti-Virus said autorun.inf was a virus or trojan and nuked it.
All well and good, except now I'm worried my laptop has a virus AVG missed. Sophos is available to UWA students, and I downloaded it, but running the file runs the extractor, which does its thing, cleans up after itself, and... leaves nothing behind that I can find. Certanly not, you know, anti-virus software. So that's a bit mystifying.
I also downloaded Avast! Anti-Virus, and it's updated and running, and hasn't called anything yet, but I can't find how to tell it to do a full scan of my computer. At least it's running in impedence of anything new? I don't know.
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I know that you are way more computer literate than I am but I find that when I have problems or questions that I ask the internet. Of course, I get millions of answers(many useless) but have settled on bleepingcomputer.com as my main reference. The people on the forums are really helpful.
I'm happy to see that you are feeling well at this time. I seldom post but I wanted you to know that another person on the other side of the world thinks good thoughts your way.
*blinks at icon* Wow, your daughter looks a *lot* like you.
I thank you for the suggestion, but my version of asking the internet runs more along the lines of asking my geeky friends. They Know Stuff. :D
I also thank you for the good thoughts. It's nice to hear.
Since there are a variety of new threats that spread using autorun.inf, it could be you, or it could be the library & uni. It's possible that one program has detections for one part of it, and the other has different detections. Some threats also prevent AV software from being installed.
Please to see my post on preventing the spread of this crap thru autorun/autoplay (http://shiningmoon.livejournal.com/590821.html). Sadly don't know how do to a full system scan on that program, but we always recommend doing it in Safe Mode to ensure nothing viral is running (most things can't load in Safe Mode).
There's also the Symantec Security Check (http://securitycheck.symantec.com) (an online scanner), which can't remove anything, but it can at least tell you if you have something. FWIW.
Good luck, hon. (And I have been following along in your recent posts.) *hugs*
I just realized I read your post wrong. I bet the library's computer was infected, tried to spread through your thumb drive, and subsequent computers picked up the infected bits. Won't hurt to do a scan, for sure.
Yeah, that is what I was getting at. :) Twice I've had my antivirus software be all OH HELL NO at thumb drives that have been in that library computer, I was just getting paranoid about things in case it had missed something.
There's no autorun.inf in my c:\, and I just did what you said with the folder thing.
I suspect it's fine - the first time I put a library-computer-infected thumb drive in my computer was last week, and I only had any problems at all today, and that could well be because sometimes my computer confuses itself a bit (especially when hibernating) if it's running on low-power mode.
I might try it. I installed Avast just fine, though, and a full boot scan (which scanned the entire system without loading the OS at all) turned up nothing.
So my computer is clean by two different antivirus programs. Given that a virus check run locally on my really-quite-fast computer takes a VERY LONG TIME, I'm not sure I'd want to do one via the internet. I'm going to do a full scan while running overnight, just in case, and then I think I'll just try and relax.
I know that some virus programs detect the non-viral drivers/other system files on flash drives as viruses (has happened to a friend of mine), so it's entirely possible it was just Sophos being odd, but I wanted to be as sure as possible. (Next up, of course, using the flash drive again and then trying it in a library computer again.)
Where this gets mildly problematic is my acquired discomfort with sticking a thumb drive into a State Library computer again. I'm done with *that* computer, but I'm not sure I trust the other ones...
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: |
March 10th, 2009 04:23 pm (UTC) |
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R,
Avast is fairly good, in my experience. If there's still a virus on your computer, it would surprise me a little.
M.
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