W32.Stration@mm

[Sharra]

Help!
My norton has picked this up twice in the last week.
I'm really concerned cos I don't know where its coming from (I've had no email attachments) and surely my norton should pick it up as its coming in.
Is there a way it could be getting in thru Firefox?
Any advice as to what to do would be really appreciated
Thanks

 

[Rochdale]

looks fairly tame, if you've got norton installed and up to date you should be fine.

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-092111-0525-99

 

[Chick]

Help!
Is there a way it could be getting in thru Firefox?

NO WAI man 'cosfirefox is teh win an teh IE iz suXXorr innit ?

/me wishes he had a quid for everyone who is 'secure 'cos they use 'fox / osx / BeOS ....

/mumble

 

[Zeus]

i find the best way to be safe, is to ensure i open any dodgey looking email attachments on someone elses computer

 

[Gottaa]

Not sure on people's opinions of Norton, went to a machine last weekend to get them up and running on wireless, they had the latest norton which also blocks adaware/spyware. The machine was running like a dog

Ran Spybot and found 148 problems, which included 4 dll's and one .exe and the usual harmless tracking cookies. Then installed AVG, it complained, wanted a reboot, rebooted, installed after the reboot, which removed one memory resident virus and then went on to find 3 viruses in the quick system scan it did. They did a full scan but I left when I started it, no point them paying me to sit there doing nothing and the wireless was all up and running.

My Feeling is Norton is as useful as a chocolate fireguard

NOTE: AVG and Spybot are both totally free and it boggles the mind free stuff is better than stuff you pay for.

 

[Sharra]

Thanks guys
Gottaa - I've heard that opinion before re norton vs avg. I have to say I hate the way norton seems to take over your machine. I may well uninstall norton on this machine and see what happens with avg.
ok, so am I being really dumb then in assuming that cos Im running proper firewall and anti-virus, nothing should get in? I always thought that so long as my definitions were up to date, anything bad should be picked up on the way in.
If Norton has picked that worm thing up on a system scan, does that mean its been in my machine and done its bad thing already?

 

[Gottaa]

Sometimes things can get in because it's a new virus and slips in past the memory resident scanner but would get picked up by a weekly scan as the virus database has since been updated to look for it and now it knows what to look for.

Basically make sure you run at least a system check once a week (some virus checkers constantly do checks when the machine isn't in use, not sure if Norton does though)

One caveat, My grandad's machine yesterday said it got a virus, I went over there and I think it was AVG incorrectly thinking FirefoxSetup for the latest version had a virus in it, I've seen it happen before with install files. And I'd downloaded it for him from Firefox's home page so it should have been a safe file.

One tip since I'm paranoid, if you do swap from Norton to AVG make sure your machine is off the internet when you uninstall/reboot and then install AVG (download AVG first), just on the very very tiny chance something hits when you have no protection running.

 

[Cullhaven]

Thats AVG's only slight drawback, updates sometimes cause false positives. It deleted some of my ATI drivers a couple of years ago, and was a devil to fix. Would still rather have that on than Nortons bloatware though.

Another "avoidance" tactic is to use an email program that can't open up attachments on its own. Outlook Distress can still be "got around" by incoming virus attachments. Something like Forte Agent can't. I'm sure there must be others that can't as well.

 

[Coalman]

Agree I refuse to use Outlook myself having bought a licence for Turnpike from Demon when I first got onto the Internet with them many many moons ago I have found no reason to change from it although I have dabbled with Thunderbird but found it looked the same as Outlook for my taste.

 

[Gottaa]

Oddly enough I'll be looking at Firebird for work tomorrow

 

[Sharra]

Thanks loads
I don't use outlook, I was told that Eudora was much safer, is that still the case or should I change that?

 

[Requiel]

I use Thunderbird at work, had a bit of an issue with Norton deleting my inbox because of the way it stores emails but that's easily fixed - just do it in advance rather than after your inbox vanishes. I don't use any pop email at home anymore, my various gmail accounts are the only addresses I use for personal stuff.