PC Attack - Undo the Trojan.VUNDO

An attack on my pc occurred a few days ago that threatened to become serious. I thought my PC was going to go down about two days before Christmas. Would my credit card and passwords be compromised? Fortunately, however, I managed to fix the problem.

Windows Updates was rendered unoperational, which was very worrying. Norton Antivirus detected trojan.VUNDO. It appeared to fix the problem, but then immediately reported the problem again.

The implication of this is the computer is cut off from security updates from the operating system supplier (Microsoft) and hence becomes more vulnerable to further more serious attacks. Potentially if a predator, who for instance wants to compromise your bank details or passwords, whatever, knows that if he has cut you off from reinforcements from the operating system provider or your antivirus software provider, he knows that you are defenceless and wounded and sooner or later he can find a way through. You could be farmed.

If security updates are disabled, it is like a bank that has its alarm system cut off. You ignore it at your peril, even if the computer is nomal in every other way.

In this case not only was the automatic updates of Windows knocked out. Also the ability to access Windows security downloads manually was disabled. This severely handicaps your ability to fix the problem. You are effectively cut off from base. Your operating system provider cannot help you.

The next resort was to go to the Windows forums and discussion groups to find an independent route to getting a fix. A report of the same problem was quickly found after doing a search of the discussion group. A software package was recomended that could deal with this problem. The package in question had the major advantage that it was free! It is called Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware 1.31 and it can be found at http://www.malwarebytes.org/ and I strongly recommend it.

Updates are brought out every few days so the supplier is responding to the latest threats very rapidly. There are also paid versions which are even more powerfull.

There is a continual battle going on between criminals and the Internet community. Online fraud is always a potential problem for anyone who uses the Internet. However, it is good to know that companies like Malwarebytes are there providing solutions. They definitely knew how to undo the VUNDO for me!

Written by John Eley on January 27th, 2009 with no comments.
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