virus protection or time bomb?

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 10:03 am

I picked up nortons anti virus only to discover there were a number of viruses just sitting in wait on my hard drive.

Gah, there's a back door .. gah, there's a worm..

So feeling proud of myself I continued on feeling virus free and happy.. when all of a sudden the computer freezes up.. after a while of thinking about what could be causing it I realised that nortons was scanning the entire folder each time I went into one... and so soon after I discover it starts indescriminantly deleting (it calls it cleaning) my files. Things like Kazaa lite. I use it regularly.. nothing it has installed has been a virus yet it says the install is one.. go figure.

Anyway, why is it this friggen program can't figure out virus from legitimate program? Or is it that Nortons is in bed with the music biz and afraid I may download mp3's.

Anyway, during it's free reign on my computer it also managed to knock me offline so I couldn't go anywhere to investigate the things it was suggesting were viruses. (sigh)

At this point I've had enough and disabled the little #$&*er and my computer is working again though who knows for how long.

So I'm just wondering, anyone else experience this?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 12:55 pm

No, i have norton and haven't found anythign like that, it all seems fine - i'm using Norton IS 2003
The firewall/anti-virus at work sometimes blocks access, but that is because i played around with the settings and made them a bit heavy handed...

I have kazaa and so on and haven't found any problems with norton blocking me, etc and i've downloaded tons of things

If you meant you had alot of viruses on your HD first and then installed norton, i wouldn't trust that though, as i am sure norton is one of the big targets of alot of worms and so on...if it isn't on there first i think it can be disabled or corrupted
Might be worthwhile trying an external check through the symantec site to check your hard drive like that

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 7:58 am

I cannot answer from personal experience, but my working colleague who's regularly setting up and/or cleaning computers wears on Norton... so maybe Beo is right and should either install it first or double-check with another program seeing if it was corrupted.

Regards, PitD

andyboy_uk · Post by **andyboy_uk** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 2:41 pm

Cows,

Head over to http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php and download their free anti-virus software AVG.

It is a very good Antivirus software that has free updates, is very easy to use and configure, offers all the standard features like email checking and file checking, and beats the crap out of enterprise wide AV solutions such as Sophos.

I havent used norton in ages so I cant compare to it, but this one is a little gem of a program.

You need to sign up for a key (free) to unlock the programs installer, but I havent recieved loads of SPAM as a result of doing so, (I get tons anyway so I probably didnt notice I may say).

Well worth the time and the download,

Hope that helps

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 11:19 pm

I've used it for t he past two years.. in fact it's one of the things we used at the college before we piked up nortons.

Post by **Lunever** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 1:42 pm

I also use Norton and have none of the problems you describe. The only thing that Norton does and shouldn't do on my machine is blocking the MSN-file-transfer, and I was not able to convince it to allow that.

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 8:29 pm

Yes Lunever, that's one of the oddities... had that effect, too, on my former computer.

Thanks for the link andyboy, I'll try it as well - never wrong to check a recommendation...

Regards, PitD

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 10:07 pm

well, the idea that it mistook kazaa lite (not regular kazaa) for a virus and not the installed parts.. just the installer. Well, it makes me wonder..

moo

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 10:46 pm

Odd, which kazaa lite? (i have 1.7.2)
I keep all my source files and it would have scanned the installer a heck of a lot by nowq and never complained about it

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Wed Aug 06, 2003 8:17 am

version 2.1.0

moo

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Wed Aug 06, 2003 12:12 pm

Is that the latest one? Thought there was a newer version of K lite already available... ?

Regards, PitD

Seeker19 · Post by **Seeker19** » Sat Aug 09, 2003 2:06 am

I have actually experienced something very similar, cowsmanaut. Starting back in November, my laptop's install of Norton (sorry, I don't know which version, for reasons that will become obvious soon enough) started "quarantining" seemingly random files on the system. At first I took little notice, actually a little smug that the virus software was working.

But then different programs stopped running. It soon became obvious that Norton was methodically "quarantining" (isolating with a filename change, at a minimum) every executable file on my system. Yikes!!!

So I contacted the IT department at work, as this was a laptop I used for business and it is was my employer's licensed copy of NAV. I took the laptop off the network permanently, and turned off NAV's real-time protection before it started in on the OS executables themselves.

So, after a couple of months of investigation, the IT folks (ever overworked and understaffed) discovered that NAV had started identifying the files as being infected with the w95.spaces.1445 virus, which copies itself into .exe files and does nothing else until 1 June, at which point it activates and does something particularly dire. At the time (I have not checked since) there was no way of cleaning infected files. So the night of 31 May had me up late backing up my documents and other non-.exe files before manually reformatting the system. I don't know that the virus was present, but I know that NAV thought it was. I haven't taken the time to rebuild the system yet, though I plan to eventually. In the meantime I make do with another laptop and various network terminals.

I'm not saying that this is what happened with your system, but it may shed some light on NAV's behavior toward files it detects as infected.

Seeker19

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat Aug 09, 2003 6:07 am

well, the thing was a lot of previous files it said it was going to quarantine. However this one it "cleaned" in otherwords it deleted it outright.

Post by **Lunever** » Mon Aug 11, 2003 1:11 pm

Well, a program like Norton should be installed immediately after the machine is installed with it's operating system.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Aug 11, 2003 2:45 pm

Back to kazaa - i think there is kazaa 2.2.0, but anything above 1.7.2 starts having spyware and so on contained in it, i thought?
Don't know if that has to do with anything though....

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon Aug 11, 2003 5:30 pm

kazaa lite.. not Kazaa..

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Aug 11, 2003 8:46 pm

my understanding was that even kazaa lite wasn't so lite anymore (and while it didn't have gator it had soemthing in it)after that revision...i may have been mistaken, but i've never upgraded...

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Wed Aug 13, 2003 4:53 pm

Kazaa lite is not bad... definitely a lot better than the full version in terms of annyoing advertising.

Regards, PitD

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Aug 14, 2003 6:44 pm

A few days ago I read at the site of my provider that there is a version of kazaa around that is infected with a dialer! It's a nasty idea, because if your firewall/antivirus software asks, whether it should isolate kazaa you might answer "no".

copperman · Post by **copperman** » Thu Aug 14, 2003 9:54 pm

beowuuf wrote:Back to kazaa - i think there is kazaa 2.2.0, but anything above 1.7.2 starts having spyware and so on contained in it, i thought?
Don't know if that has to do with anything though....

Ditch kazaa its spyware go get http://www.shareaza.com it connects to more than just gnutella