On August 4th,2009 I opened a photo file sent by an aquaintance, I have the Norton 360 on and running, but my computer got zapped by a virus. It so happened that my friend's computer was sending out messages to his contacts' list all by itself containing such a virus. My notebook is no longer bootable although I had reloaded the recover cds from the manufacturer.
Since the Norton 360 was up can running, it did not detect any virus, worm, or malware in this email attachment...Now that my notebook is no longer bootable and when I consulted Norton's team of consultants, they required that I pay an additional $99 to have such a threat removed from my current computer, as I have the culprit email isolated into the Junk mail folder.
So my question is since I have the Norton 360 up and running on all my notebooks and computers, so why wasn't such a virus/worm/malware detected? Isn't Norton 360 supposed to protect our computers from such potential threats on a 360 daysx24 hours? Well after this incidence, I doubt if I will trust Norton's products again! Note that such an attack came from an attachment in an email supposed to be sent by my friend. I wonder how on earth are we suppose to prvent such an attack!
So Norton users, please be aware of such a threat!
Hi johnfarm:
Have you already been able to remove the threat from your present computer? If not we may be able to assist you with that.
Whether or not any antivirus product is able stop an infected file depends on several things. It depends on how agressively the settings are loaded in, it depends on having the latest version of the antivirus engine, and constant updating. It may also depend on what kind of a file has been sent. Zip and rar files are not scanned until open.
It also depends on how well the malware has been written. Script is a problem because of java, so a great deal of malware are script insertions.
How well any antivirus product works also depends on what other security products are working at the same time. We have several rootkit infections at the moment where users had two or more antivirus engines bunging up the works.
I find NI2009 to be very effective, but one of my sons insisted on downloading a gift in a Def Leopard song after being warned no less than three times. On the fourth occasion the trojan was allowed, as Norton mistook my son for a thinking human being.
Finally, nothing is perfect. If you look at all of the other products forums before making a change, you will see exactly the same problems, and exactly the same comments as yourself. Malware has to be written and rewritten to be successful, as do AV's.
Hi Delphinium, thank you but I have already deleted the culprit email message from my Junk files. I had informed all my contacts not to open any messages from me with an attachment such as "Fotos" or "Photos". I used Norton 360 to scan my current computer and has found nothing...
One other point is that this morning when I checked my email in box, there were two more similar messages sent by the same person. I had deleted them all. Whatever Malware this contains is very persistent!
Since I never opened the message with the Fotos as attachment on this computer, so hopefully the malware will not creep in.
As my other notebook has already been zapped and out of service, unable to reboot. So that one is done with.
Will the notebook power up? Are you able to get into DOS with it. We have a couple of pros on this forum that are pretty sharp cookies.
delphinium wrote:
I find NI2009 to be very effective, but one of my sons insisted on downloading a gift in a Def Leopard song after being warned no less than three times. On the fourth occasion the trojan was allowed, as Norton mistook my son for a thinking human being.
Norton Internet Security 2010 should Solve this Issue as it will have Download Intelligence.
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johnfarm,
I'd like to give you the Web Link to Submit Threats to symantec Security Response: https://submit.symantec.com/websubmit/retail.cgi.
What has probably happened here is that your Norton Product did not have the Virus Definitions for this Threat, and that is why the Threat got on to the computer.
Message Edited by Floating_Red on 08-05-2009 10:52 PM
Message Edited by Floating_Red on 08-05-2009 10:53 PM
johnfarm -
In this case I would suggest using the following IF the laptop has CD rom drive on it.
http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm Download this on a working system and burn the ISO image. Do not write the file but burn as an image. The resulting bootable disk has several malware removal and repair tools included. If the laptop has power and is just not booting due to a corrupt MBR or other disk error, this may help.
Let us know what you find with this tool.