Blaster (not me) Virus

[BlasterBates]

Checking my PC (windows 2000) I noticed msblast.exe was running in the task list. Funny because I don't have the symptoms of Blaster; not sure why, maybe it tried to install something and failed. Couldn't find index.exe, which it uses to install itself, but found a reference in the registry.

It strikes me as easy to get rid of, just delete it form the system directory and delete the references to it (msblast, index.exe) in the registry.

Is this correct ?

[whats in a name]

look on the av sites

Norton et al have removal tools.

Yes in general deleting the prog, take the entry out of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/run folder.

But where did it come from ? Do you have a different installer somewhere ? Run the norton removal tool to be on the safe side.

Oh - if you're on XP you might have to disable systyem restore (right click on my computer/properties) or windows can reinstall the damn things

[BlasterBates]

Re: look on the av sites

Where did it come from?

Good question

I don't have e-mail, I use another machine for that. It must have appeared when I was using the internet, the date stamp is actually August 2003; so it would appear that it's been there for a while. I was actually checking for the sasser virus (i.e. avserve.exe), which I don't appear to have.

At the weekend my PC became very slow while surfing (the reason I'm checking) so I switched off and on, then in order to get my IExplorer working again which kept displaying an error message, I had to delete the cache. Weird, maybe I didn't pick up Sasser but this Blaster thing.

All a bit worrying really; my unprotected Windows NT desktop doesn't have any problems at all, but it's not a target for these worms and I don't open suspicious mails.

[whats in a name]

worms

several of the latest worms dont run on nt/2k anyway.

Have a look through the registry folder I mentioned and do a google on every program thats running - you should find out if they are legit or baddies.


I talked my father in law through sasser removal a couple of days ago - at the time the avserve.exe wasnt referenced on norton or mcafee so he must have been an early hit - they quoted skynet or wserve as being thte programs to avoid.

told him to go into task monitor to see what was running and I went through the list of processes in google to see if they made sense. I found 1 reference to avserve in german - put it through babbelfish to see what they said. Killed the process, removed the reg entry and the file - It seems to have screwed up his antivirus though - Ive sent him an install disk and some firewall software. Told him to buy a real firewall and run ms update.