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  • From: "Thomas Beckett" <thomas AT tbeckett.com>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [internetworkers] desperately need virus help
  • Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 00:48:44 -0400 (EDT)

I have a bad virus problem that I cannot figure out. I'm desperate,
because it has screwed up my mail client.

I use a recent version of Mozilla for browsing and mail (on WinXP).
This evening I got an email that was obviously spam or a virus, and
clicked on it to "Junk" it into the spam filter. Never opened the
message, just highlighted it in order to delete it. Something
immediately began going crazy using accessing the hard drive, slowed
everything down to a crawl. I had to unplug and remove the battery in
order to shut down the computer.

I use Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, and had just updated the
virus definitions a few days ago, and scanned my whole system then. I
updated them again and scanned the whole system. NAV told me that I
have the W32.Netsky.Q@mm virus in two places, my mail Inbox and in a
file in the Norton Antivirus user settings folder. Here's the info on
the virus.

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.netsky.q AT mm.html

Norton provides a removal tool, but when I ran the tool is reported no
instances of the Netsky virus. I looked for some of the registry
entries and for the files that Netsky virus creates, according to the
above-referenced page, and didn't find anything like those described.

I went off-network and ran through the NAV scan and removal tool
process a couple of times (eating up most of the evening) to no avail.
I tried to delete I opened the mail client and created a new
folder and moved the contents of my Inbox to the new folder but for
the offending message and one other spam. I highlighted both messages
and deleted both. Rebooted and ran NAV again. Still says I have two
instances of Netsky in the same place.

So I am able to use my laptop (Dell Inspiron) and access the Net (I'm
using Moz Firebird right now) without apparent incident. I can open
the Mozilla Mail client without apparent incident, but when I try to
retrieve my mail, the hard drive goes crazy again. I looked at the
mail files in the following path

C:\Documents and Settings\T Beckett\Application
Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\ag50m5dl.slt\Mail\mail.tbeckett.com

and the entirely empty Inbox (no file extension) is still reported as
being 600 meg in size. And I think -- I'm afraid to try and reproduce
this -- that when I simply highlighted the "Inbox" file (no extension)
the same behavior resulted, hard drive goes crazy.

I conclude that I don't have the Netsky virus, but that the virus I do
have has fooled NAV into thinking it was Netsky. And it has
apparently infected NAV in some fashion.

I'm at a loss. And I am crippled by the inability to use my mail
client (This is sent through my webmail interface). Somebody please
help! TIA




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