PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => General Tech Discussion, News & Q&A => Topic started by: Simon on January 30, 2006, 16:45
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PC users have been urged to scan their computers before 3 February to avoid falling victim to a destructive virus.
On that date the Nyxem virus is set to delete Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Acrobat files on infected machines.
Nyxem is thought to have caught out many people by promising porn to those who open the attachments on e-mail messages carrying the virus.
Anti-virus companies have stopped lots of copies, suggesting it had infected a large number of computers.
Porn peril
The Nyxem-E Windows virus first emerged on 16 January and has been steadily racking up victims ever since. Nyxem-E is also known as the Blackmal, MyWife, Kama Sutra, Grew and CME-24 virus.
Helpfully, the virus reports every fresh infection back to an associated website which displays the total via a counter. Late last week the counter was reporting millions of infections, but detective work by security firm Lurhq found that many of these reports were bogus. However, Lurhq reported that more than 300,000 machines are known to have fallen victim to Nyxem-E.
SAMPLE SUBJECT LINES
Fw: Funny : )
Fw: Picturs
*Hot Movie*
Fw: SeX.mpg
Re: Sex Video
Miss Lebanon 2006
School girl fantasies gone bad
Like many recent viruses, Nyxem tries to spread by making people open attachments on e-mail messages that are infected with the destructive code.
The subject lines and body text of the various messages Nyxem uses vary, but many falsely claim that pornographic videos and pictures are in the attachments.
On infected machines the virus raids address books to find e-mail addresses to send itself to.
The virus also tries to spread by searching for machines on the same local network as any computer it has compromised.
Unlike many recent viruses Nyxem is set to overwrite 11 different types of file on infected machines on the third of every month. The list of files to be over-written includes the most widely used sorts of formats.
NYXEM FILE TARGETS
DMP - Oracle files
DOC - Word document
MDB - Microsoft Access
MDE - Microsoft Access/Office
PDF - Adobe Acrobat
PPS - PowerPoint slideshow
PPT - PowerPoint
PSD - Photoshop
RAR - Compressed archive
XLS - Excel spreadsheet
ZIP - Compressed file
Separately, the virus also tries to disable anti-virus software to stop it updating and can also disable the mouse and keyboard on infected machines.
Users were being urged to update anti-virus software and to scan their system to ensure they had not been caught out. Many anti-virus firms have also produced tools that help clean up infected systems.
Jason Steer, technical consultant at mail filtering firm Ironport, said Nyxem was a throwback to the types of viruses that used to circulate in the early days of computer networks.
"If you go back 10-15 years ago viruses tended to quite malicious," he said. "They were going to re-format your hard disk, delete files and so on."
Pete Simpson, threat lab manager at security firm Clearswift, said: "It's a bit puzzling because script kiddies have largely left the scene.
"It shows a certain intelligence in its design but what's the motive?" he asked, "Pure vandalism does not ring true these days."
Both Mr Steer and Mr Simpson feared that home users would be hardest hit by Nyxem on 3 February.
Most businesses, they said, now have regularly updated anti-virus systems in place and disinfect e-mail traffic before it reaches users' desktops.
By contrast many home users did not regularly patch Windows, update anti-virus or perform full system scans to ensure their machine stays clean. Users were also encouraged to make regular back-ups of any files they want to preserve.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4661582.stm
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A bit of a coincidence, but I always update my anti-virus definitions on Monday. Needless to say, as an AVG user I can't get the current definitions because as usual the server is obviously too busy and can't cope. To be fair, it isn't as bad as it used to be - I once went thirteen weeks without any updates until someone on here gave me a direct link to get definitions from Grisoft's website, but you shouldn't have to do that.
Does anyone use Avast and what is that like?
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As with many of these events, you are perfectly safe, unless you have a habit of opening unexpected e-mail attachments.
The old adage, 'Never take sweets from a stranger', springs to mind.
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Could have done with you giving that advice to my brother's ex, Simon. She was a nuisance, always on the phone with computer trouble. I went round to her house one day to find Bonzi bloody Buddy skateboarding across the screen after she had double-clicked a "We have a present for you" attachment. It took hours to get rid of it.
However, her all-time classic has to be when she had Telewest cable installed about six years ago. She couldn't get onto the internet. After spending god knows how much on support calls, she got a £35.00 a hour geezer in to have a look at it, but to no avail. I went round to have a look and decided the modem was goosed, so I nipped home and returned with two internal and one external modem that I was 100% sure worked but it still wouldn't connect:
"No dial tone detected".
Exasperated, I went over to the socket on the wall and unplugged the lead to have a look for signs of any damage. At that moment, although nothing was plugged into the socket, the phone started ringing! Following the phone lead round the room, I suddenly found another socket. She had only plugged the modem into the BT socket which was now dead as she had gone over to Telewest.
Mind you, nothing surprised me from someone who thought the Australians celebrate Christmas in July "because that's when they have Winter"!
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Good story Dave! :laugh: Strangely enough, my Norton's 2002 expired today and when I tried re-subscribing it told me that my version is no longer supported and to download or buy Norton's 2006. Problem is that this is single user only software so I could not transfer it to my wife's machine as I did with previous versions. It would cost me £70 and the reviews I've seen are very disappointing. AVG is only free for single use too. I am now thinking of having a try at Avast.
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Mind you, nothing surprised me from someone who thought the Australians celebrate Christmas in July "because that's when they have Winter"!
I suppose she has to be blonde then Dave :wink:
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Just downloaded Avast but it's only a free trial for 60 days. :laugh:
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Norton Anti Virus 2 user pack (http://www.symantecstore.com/dr/v2/ec_Main.Entry17c?SP=10023&SID=27685&CID=204270&PID=765151&PN=1&V1=765151&CUR=826&DSP=&PGRP=0&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=204270) is £49.99 from the Symantec store, Clive, so I'm sure you could get it cheaper by shopping around. Have you tried Amazon and the like? You could then get one of the free firewalls, such as Agnitum Outpost (http://www.agnitum.co.uk/index.php?ref=37C133AF).
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Clive, not sure, but this Upgrade Edition (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BGQDMC/qid=1138653934/sr=8-15/ref=pd_ka_15/203-1611968-4271169) might be what you need.
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Needless to say, as an AVG user I can't get the current definitions because as usual the server is obviously too busy and can't cope.
I've never had that problem.. I use the free version of AVG and every time I turn on my computer it downloads all the latest defintions. It seemingly does this daily now and it is as fast on my home windows machine as it is on my laptop at work.
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Mind you, nothing surprised me from someone who thought the Australians celebrate Christmas in July "because that's when they have Winter"!
I suppose she has to be blonde then Dave :wink:
Funny you should say that, Sandra.......... :D
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Clive, not sure, but this Upgrade Edition (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BGQDMC/qid=1138653934/sr=8-15/ref=pd_ka_15/203-1611968-4271169) might be what you need.
I telephoned Symantic this afternoon to explain my problem and they told me the only thing I can do is to order 2 CD's at £35 each. Needless to say I told them to get stuffed. That's a brilliant find Simon! 8) :thanks:
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Just downloaded Avast but it's only a free trial for 60 days. :laugh:
avast has a free version with 14 months of
updates for free you just register for free every 14 months
after downloading you have to register at the websight to get it for free
I havent had any problems with this at all
http://www.asw.cz/eng/download-avast-home.html
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Oh right Davy! I hadn't realised that. I'll have another go at Avast. :thanks:
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you can set it to update automaticly
and to run a scan while your offline
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anyone else suspect that all this is just speculation by companies to make you bye their antivirus solutions before feb 3rd, or am i just being cynical?
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Clive I use avast and haven't had any problems so far, the one I downloaded has a different link than the one posted previously.....
http://www.avast.com/eng/free_software.html
DJ
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I downloaded it yesterday and I haven't had any problems. It's even compatible with Norton's which I haven't bothered to remove yet.
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My sister put Norton on her 3.2Ghz, 1GB RAM machine and it was running slower than my old 466 Celeron that I use as a test machine. I have been round and uninstalled Norton and replaced it with Avast and she says it's never run as fast or as smoothly.
I'm very reluctant to get rid of AVG as, updating problems aside, I have never had any problems while using it. In fact (touch wood) I have never had a single virus in seven years of home computing. However, I am hearing some good things about Avast, including reports that it has found things that others have missed,
Hmm - A bit of a dilemma. :?
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I've heard that Norton's 2006 grinds your machine to a halt too Dave and that's why I was so worried about installing it.