At a loss on what to do...

[Angry Ninja]

I've recently got a nasty virus/adware/worm that is COMPLETELY impervious to anything I throw at it, from Avast!, to Shaw Secure (F-secure program that came bundled with my internet), to Ad-Aware.

These programs often come across it as I work on my computer, and if I attempt to do any sort of action it will refuse to take any action against it.

The viruses/worms/whatever they are are as follows:

Win32.monder
Win32.SuperJuan

and a collection of letters that I can't recall.

I'm completely at a loss on what to do. I've considered System Restore but I've been told that isn't effective at all. And as I've said, my anti-malware programs are completely ineffective.

I'm desperate for a solution, and ANY help would be appreciated.

Known symptoms I've experienced include: Pop-up ads while surfing the internet (frequently when using search engines), Pop-ups by my anti-spyware and malware programs saying it has detected something malicious but cannot take any action against it, causing these alerts to pop up very frequently.

My OS is Windows XP, and I use both FireFox and IE as my browsers.

 

[Padma]

Have you looked around for answers?

Check out http://www.techpings.com/2008/04/how-to-remove-packed-win32mondergen.html

and http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t43051.html[/t166141.html.

They may not solve all your problems, but should at least get you headed in the right direction.

 

[Turner]

Try Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. It's cleaned infections that Spybot & adaware couldn't.

 

[Aramazd]

Try HijackThis.
Then post the log on a HijackThis forum:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS310&q=hijackthis+forum&btnG=Search

 

[illram]

I can second Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware, worked for me with a similarly hard to get Trojan/worm/whatever it was.

Super Anti-Spyware is also good.

If you use Hijack This, you can also try and read the log yourself using this tutorial:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=38752

 

[Perfection]

There's always reformat!

 

[Macha]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]Some advice: If you have any other computers in frequent contact with that one (network, flash drives etc.), scan them aswell.

Update IE to the newest version of IE7 now. If you haven't updated IE since Tuesday, do so now, there was some new version released to deal with a severe (and exploited bug).

Or stop using IE altogether.

The same applies if your using FF < 2.0.0.20 or FF 3 < 3.0.6 . (Yes FF has security vulnerbilities too, just usually not as severe or widely exploited or long lasting as those of IE)

And finally, as perf has said, there's always reformat.
[/font]

 

[GoodGame]

I recommend Kaspersky suite.

 

[Angry Ninja]

Apologies for the long response time as I never seem to have time to log on my laptop anymore.

Oddly the Trojan or Malware rarely bares its ugly head anymore. I don't get popups, my computer runs smoothly; though I occasionally get a spyware alert telling me its still there. All this after Shaw Secure said it could 'process' the 'item' after a brief restart of the computer (Note: it has done this before and had no effect).

It seems like it's still there, it's just not as annoying.

Reformatting is out of the question for now, as I have many files I'd like to keep and some programs that would be an extreme hassle to reinstall for what seems like a minor infection now.

I did some googling and apparently F-Secure made something to circumvent Monder's invulnerability, which I'll check out.

I'll go take a look at Malwarebytes AntiSpyware as well, download it (if it's free) and see how it tackles the problem.

IE is at IE7, so I can't do much about it.

If none of these solve the problem I'll finally download HijackThis and get the log analyzed by someone with computer skill on an HJT forum - I'm afraid to do anything myself with it as I've heard it can be harmful when misused.

But thank you very much for all your help and advice. The Malware seems to be less of a problem now than it was when I made this thread.

And yes Padma, I've tried looking for basic info and found the same links you had. Thank you for posting them however, as I had overlooked them when I first came across them. Now that I'm in a calm state as opposed to my panicked state a while ago, I can finally tackle this Trojan with a clear head

 

[illram]

Anti-Malware is free.

Even if you aren't getting pop-ups and you don't really see the problem anymore, you want to rid yourself of every last bit of whatever you may have, as it has a nasty habit of coming back if you leave some of it lying around.

That, and you don't really know exactly what it is doing in the background. (Keylogging? Monitoring your websites? Stealing email contacts?)