McKBrew needs computer help (Vundo Virus)

Anyone else had to deal with the trojan vundo virus (Nasty B!tch). I've tried every recommended removal tool I can find, and they all catch the virus but with this trojan, it knows you are coming to kill it and moves somewhere else. I'm at the point where I'm considering saving my pics and music to a stand alone hard drive and totally reloading XP.

Any other suggestions before I kill my desktop?

Have you tried just googling for "Vundo Virus Manual Removal"?

I've tried quite a few different suggestions from various websites. No luck so far. Still going at it, just figured I'd ask here as well because HBT is literally the best place to get help with almost anything.

Just a suggestion.

On a couple occasions I have had Symantec Served Ed and a few other services stumped. I was however able to find a manual removal method for each occasion.

I just had the same problem. Vundo trojan got in through my Microsoft updates, and after talking to MS they suggested that I try Malwarebytes. Its a free program and is supposedly pretty good at taking out Vundo's. I did this yesterday.

As of now, it looks like the program did its job pretty well, as I have not been having any real problems. Give it a try and see how it does.

After dealing with all this PC bullsh*t I am going to get a mac.

After several hours, several "fixes." I have been surfing without pop-ups (so far). We'll see what happens. Teenage daughter will be sternly lectured about clicking on pop-ups warning of non-existent viruses.

For future reference, make an image of your hard drive (without virus) for backup. Then when you have something hard like this just re-image the drive with the old copy. Takes 15-20 min.

Only downside is you'll lose anything that's been saved or loaded since the last time you imaged the drive.

Wait, you got the virus during a MS update?

I guess it's a good thing I don't update my work laptop (Windows Vista)

z987k said:

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

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werd.

Running Ubuntu Intrepid (on my personal laptop) and enjoying a virus-free life.

Soperbrew said:

For future reference, make an image of your hard drive (without virus) for backup. Then when you have something hard like this just re-image the drive with the old copy. Takes 15-20 min.

Only downside is you'll lose anything that's been saved or loaded since the last time you imaged the drive.

Click to expand...

That's what I do, but I keep my data on a different partition.

McKBrew said:

After several hours, several "fixes." I have been surfing without pop-ups (so far). We'll see what happens. Teenage daughter will be sternly lectured about clicking on pop-ups warning of non-existent viruses.

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Watch out with that damn one, i've had it hide for a few days and then come back even worse. Only way i've found to get rid of it completely is a full reload.

Vundo is one of the worst ones along with XPAntivirus2008, I spent 3 hours removing that one last night off of my wife's computer.

first get combofix and run that, then run malwarebyte.

hukdizzle said:

first get combofix and run that, then run malwarebyte.

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Yeah. Tried both of those and between a combo of the two it looks like I might have nailed it. My anti-virus software is going bat$hit this morning on different alerts, so it looks like there are still bits and pieces floating around that I didn't fully remove, but at least the software is doing it's job.

The viruses didn't come from microsoft, I'm pretty sure my teenage daughter clicked on one of those pop-up banners warning of a virus, which is actually a virus.

jcdillin said:

Vundo is one of the worst ones along with XPAntivirus2008, I spent 3 hours removing that one last night off of my wife's computer.

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Yeah av2k8 can be a real pain.

Malewarebytes seems to be the only tool that thoroughly cleans it up.

Are you using internet explorer? This may be a stupid question but that's the reason for most spyware/malware problems.

Yeah. Tried both of those and between a combo of the two it looks like I might have nailed it. My anti-virus software is going bat$hit this morning on different alerts, so it looks like there are still bits and pieces floating around that I didn't fully remove, but at least the software is doing it's job.

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Boot to safe mode and run the virus scan from there, viruses are easier to find and clean when they are not locking out the AV program pretending to be critical in use files.

Running Ubuntu Intrepid (on my personal laptop) and enjoying a virus-free life

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famous last words, there is not an OS out there that can't be Hacked or infected, some are just much harder than others. and personal files are still vulnerable

Many windows users never get viruses. Linux loads just come locked down "out of the box," Windows machines can be just as secure, but it takes way more work to get them there.

I got the antivirus360 virus, which apparently is the newest and worst version of the antivirus08/09 bug.

My computer repair man said my windows updates files got infested and when I updated, this and other bugs got downloaded. I talked to MS support and they recommended malwarebytes.

Also, I guess a lot of people are able to get rid of the main component of the virus, but as it has tons of little fragments, it will keep coming back. All of the tech people I have talked to recommend reinstalling windows. Going to do that this weekend.

Malwarebytes does a great job of finding everything, but like many of you have said, this thing installs little chunks everywhere. I thought I had it licked and then, bam this morning I had the whole program Spywareguard 2008 on my desktop which is a just a malicious installation tool. Computer is clean now, but I'm not holding my breath.

Prevx is a good AV program to run. It validates everything that tries to run or load and will ask you if it can't validate the program as safe. It uses minimal resources and is cheaper than the major brands.
Prevx - Customer and Network Security and Breach Management

Spybot 1.6 addresses this malware might want to try that first (it's free)
The home of Spybot-S&D!

The best tools are unfortunately very expensive since they are made for pro IT, they run from a bootable CD or network boot and scan your drive. Since they run under Linux there isn't any chance for a virus or trojan to mask itself from the scanner to remain resident and re-infect the disk.

I run without a virus scanner. I never download any software that isn't already trusted and scanned elsewhere, and I don't surf to random websites on my main PC. Instead I use a throw-away snapshotted Windows VM running under VMware Workstation for random surfing, and that VM has a virus scanner running in it. Such a solution will clearly not work with a teenager though so good luck.

Nuke it from orbit- Its the only way to be sure