Risking to be a boring repeat of previous posts, here is yet another security alert summary which I received from my Norton 360 today:
Severity Activity Date & Time Status Recommended Action
● High An intrusion attempt by wam.carriageslaptop.com was blocked 3/9/2017 8:35:20 PM Blocked No Action Required
Advanced Details
IPS Alert Name System Infected: Adware.Gen Activity 2
Default Action No Action Required
Action Taken No Action Required
Attacking Computer wam.carriageslaptop.com (38.134.106.125, 80)
Attacker URL wam.carriageslaptop.com/affs?addonname=HighV&clientuid=undefined&subID=50704_...
Destination Address HP-PC (192.168.0.4, 52781)
Source Address wam.carriageslaptop.com (38.134,106.125)
Traffic Description TCP, www-http
Network traffic from wam.carriageslaptop.com/affs?addonname=HighV&clientuid=undefined&subID=50704_4139_
24922&affid=9686&subaffid=1001&href=http://www.highrated.net/9024/13-things-you-shouldnt-do-during-periods/ matches the signature of a known attack. The attack was resulted
from \DEVICE\HARDDISKVOLUME2\WINDOWS\SYSWOW64\EXPLORER.EXE.
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In contrast to what used to be, this time, in the "Actions" section of the right panels, my Norton 360 recommends:
"Run Norton Power Eraser"
This recommendation is a link to a procedure which actually starts the process of invoking the Norton Power Eraser (NPE) which I had encountered a few times recently. Each time, Norton 360 detects an unusually large amount of outbound traffic from my computer and recommends to run the NPE. I was tempted to actually let it do what I was recommended but every time when I read the next screen which essentially says: NPE is an aggressive program to remove malware (or virus) and there is some chance that some useful programs might be marked as malware/virus and be removed. This warning makes me wonder how much working and useful programs I might lose by running NPE? How smart is NPE so as to distinguish a virus from a legitimate utility program?
Does anyone have good experience in using this Norton Power Eraser? Does it do a good job in removing virus while leaving your legitimate programs intact?
With the warning message, there is also a note saying that to the effect that you can undo the fix by Norton Power Eraser by running it again and choose to restore what had been removed.
My question: { Besides the link provided by the alert message (and occasional prompt by Norton 360) } how/where do I find Norton Power Eraser? Is this something I need to download and install if I want to run it again?
Again, I appreciate comments about this post.
Tong