Re: Comptuer Virus Help

herbdove came up with this when s/he headbutted the keyboard a moment ago in
alt.computer.security:

Hello all,

I'm wondering if someone would kindly me with what appears to be a
virus on my computer.

I turned on my computer yesterday, and all my bookmarks in Firefox
disappeared.

That's a bug I've seen before. And reported it.

Other oddities: I am receiving the error message:
"Error: LiveCode is not defined line:19",

Not sure what this is: possibly something you're missing in your system
configuration (.NET?)

certain (but not all)
graphics on a webpage will not load and sometimes when they do the
resolution will be bad, spacing on the page will be off, font size will
be strange, etc.

Misconfigured browser. I have mine set with small fonts (large fonts have a
tendency to mung the spacing not only between characters but between rows
as well - depends on how the page is coded), and images from the
originating site only. Stops a lot of the ads.

Another oddity--when I will click on a link of any
sort, or click on an e-mail message, etc., the page that comes up will
simply be blank. Things are running very slow overall.


Very possibly a busted Firefox. Try another browser to see if the behaviour
is repeatable on that.

I run Symantec Anti-Virus at all times,

My experience and observation: Symantec AV is most often at the top of the
list for malware to disable in any way it can before it delivers its
payload. A nineteen month old buffer overflow exploit (which still hasn't
been patched by Symantec) is a favourite vector. Once the exploit is
triggered, NIS/NAV simply stops working. Apart from that, NAV/NIS is a hog
anyway; you would be much better off using AVG and something like Panda AV,
along with Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware.Even those four programs have less of a
footprint than Symantec's offering, and you will notice a /dramatic/
difference in the responsiveness of your system. As for a softwall, use the
one provided with XP. It (surprisingly) does what it says on the tin. You
don't need Zonealarm or anything like that (which will most likely clash
horribly with XP's own firewall anyway). Remember, this is experience. Not
BS.

and have a firewall through
ZoneAlarm. I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot, and updated all. When no
viruses were detected, I downloaded AVG Anti-Virus, and Microsoft
Baseline Security Analyzer. So luck with these either. I've
uninstalled Firefox, and re-downloaded it again. Nada.

Any suggestions on how I should proceed?

Thanks a million...
matt

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