Zombie email virus/trojan help

[Guest awarner (MVP)]

Don't you just love kids and their pc's

That is until my daughter managed to play havoc with hers.

It appears she is infected with a Zombie virus/trojan and it's now infected both user accounts on the pc. I discovered it when Norton flagged up it was scanning about two hundred spam emails with various content and to all different addresses that are not stored on the PC.

It is now impossible to connect the PC to the internet as it tries to mass email as soon as you connect.

Good old Norton is up to date and will not pick up a single issue :)

Any ideas what I could be looking for and where it may be hiding?

My daughter uses mainly uses Bebo and collects MSN emoticons but that's about it. From what I understand is that this could have been sitting on the pc for a long time.

I'll try Norton again in the morning in safe mode to see what happens.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

I highly recommend CounterSpy for Spyware, and NOD32 for AV!

P

[Guest awarner (MVP)]

I've got a licence for the MS Onecare so was thinking of trying to install that but the problem I have is that I can't connect to the internet with the PC.

Will look at NOD32 trojans are different to viruses but hopefully something will pick it up.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

With CounterSpy and NOD32 (free trials available on both) i've always got rid of EVERYTHING...

P

[Guest awarner (MVP)]

Just downloaded NOD32 AV and not the whole suite will try in the morning to see if I can find the guilty party.

I'll look into CounterSpy later. Cheers

[Guest awarner (MVP)]

NOD32 appears to have done the trick, cheers for the info on the app, I've not heard of that one before :)

Found two alleged trojan files and it's not trying to send out emails as far as I am aware.

Looks like NOD32 will take over from Norton, wonder if Onecare would have picked it up as well? Guess I will never know.

[Guest ibeqa]

NOD32 appears to have done the trick, cheers for the info on the app, I've not heard of that one before :)

Found two alleged trojan files and it's not trying to send out emails as far as I am aware.

Looks like NOD32 will take over from Norton, wonder if Onecare would have picked it up as well? Guess I will never know.

You can always try Spybot Search and Destroy, it's a free app (the best in spyware, malware and it detects troyans as well).

Cheers

[Guest jimbouk]

The other really neat trick is to download autoruns from MS.

It was written by sysinternals and MS liked it so much...they bought the company.

Basically, it tells you all the apps and TSR's that really start up with windows - allowing you to stop trojans etc from starting and re-installing themselves.

I use it all the time to speed up cleaning clients pc's. It stops the malware from taking over the pc so that you can cleanse it properly.