How to Foil the Trojan.VUNDO
A few days ago my PC suffered an attack that threatended to escalate. My PC became compromised just before Christmas. I wondered whether my passwords and credit card details would be stolen. Fortunately I found a fix for the problem.
The main symptom of the attack was the inability to use Windows Updates. Also the main antivirus software that I use (Norton antivirus) appeared to know that the trojan.VUNDO was present. It reported a fix, but almost immediately this was overturned and the problem reverted.
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.
It is essential that when security updates become disabled you fix this problem as soon as possible. Do not postpone this even if the computer is operating normally in other ways. If you choose to ignore it the results could be disastrous.
The first thing to try is to download the updates manually, but in my case this was knocked out as well. My pc was totally cut off from help from the software vendor.
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.
Criminals are continually developing malware, including viruses, trojans and worms with the object of stealing money from members of the Internet community. Fortunately there are companies like Malewarebytes out there fighting them. They certainly fixed trojan.VUNDO for me.