Ok, I have tried to do some research on this topic prior to posting. Here is what happened. In a period of about 4 minutes on Tuesday my contacts in my gmail account were sent approximately 50 SPAM messages. Once the internet connection was broken, no more emails have gone out. This leads me to think that this was a virus and not a hijacking of my email. I went into my sent messages, and all the SPAM is showing going through my gmail account.
Another thing that I has noticed is that when I have tried to download something since this occurrence on Tuesday, my download stops right defore it should be completed. I was running Norton AV with current definition updates. I noticed some processes in the task manager that I didn't recall being there prior to the incident. They were ACDaemon and ACrun which are showing up under ArcSoft . I wonder if this software had its code replaced. These may not even be the source of the problem, but it seems strange that I didn't recall seeing them before. I was working in Firefox at the time and as soon as I hopped into gmail these messages started flying out to my contacts. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I have already changed the password but I just did that today. My thoughts were that the SPAM emails would have continued if my account was hijacked. It stopped as soon as I disconnected that specific computer from the Internet. I have accessed gmail from other computers and no problems. My gut is telling me that I have a bug, but maybe I am ignorant oof how the hijacking works.
I was able to put the ACDaemon program in quarantine, but not the other. If this is a virus as opposed to a hijacking, does anybody have some thoughts? this may be a random event but it also may be connected.
Are you able to see where the ACDaemon file is located?
Important: Some malware camouflage themselves as ACDaemon.exe, particularly if they are located in c:\windows or c:\windows\system32 folder. Thus check the ACDaemon.exe process on your pc whether it is pest.
I have quarantined the ACDaemon file, but there are some other files that I have been unable to quarantine, which I believe are associated with it. If I could identify what bug I am dealing with that would be a huge help.
Associated files may be ArcCon.ac and ACRun but I am just guessing at this point.
Are you able to run a HiJackThis scan? If you can, please post it back here.
Please download HiJackThis from http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/ Choose the executable and save it on your desktop. Run the file and select the first option on the main menu "Do a system scan and save a log file". When this is finished, Notepad will open with the log file in it. Save the log file and attach it to a post here via the Add Attachments Please don't attempt to fix anything that it shows until someone checks out the log. Thanks.
Logs may help to identify the malware if you do have any malware on your computer.
Ok, I have tried to do some research on this topic prior to posting. Here is what happened. In a period of about 4 minutes on Tuesday my contacts in my gmail account were sent approximately 50 SPAM messages. Once the internet connection was broken, no more emails have gone out. This leads me to think that this was a virus and not a hijacking of my email. I went into my sent messages, and all the SPAM is showing going through my gmail account.
Another thing that I has noticed is that when I have tried to download something since this occurrence on Tuesday, my download stops right defore it should be completed. I was running Norton AV with current definition updates. I noticed some processes in the task manager that I didn't recall being there prior to the incident. They were ACDaemon and ACrun which are showing up under ArcSoft . I wonder if this software had its code replaced. These may not even be the source of the problem, but it seems strange that I didn't recall seeing them before. I was working in Firefox at the time and as soon as I hopped into gmail these messages started flying out to my contacts. Any help would be greatly appreciated!