Limewire, a common denominator among Vundo infestations.

I have seen a few computers now that have been infected with the pesky (and resilient) trojan known as Vundo. 
pictured above: false threat detections indicated by a vundo "fake anti-virus" variant.

For those that aren’t aware, Vundo appears in many forms-- Spyware Protect 2009, Anti-Virus 2009, Anti Spyware 2009, and AntiVirus 360 just to name a few. I can’t stress enough how persistent this infection is, and removing it can prove to be quite a feat.

Vundo, by design, attaches itself to an area of your system in which its modules are being loaded before you even see your desktop. Its filenames are randomly generated, making a step by step removal tutorial impractical. I have seen many internet security programs fail to remove this threat. Norton and Spybot Search and Destroy are both successful at detecting it, but neither one is effective at removing it. Even the one program that I have been most successful at removing Vundo with, can sometimes be blocked from execution by Vundo’s processes.

The most common denominator in Vundo infections? Limewire. Not that I wish to advocate illegally obtaining copyrighted materials without paying royalties, but in the interests of protecting my potential clients, a little advice for safe downloading on Limewire.

Whenever you search for media, make sure the bit rate and file size make sense.
If you are attempting to download a song that is about 4 minutes long, first, make sure that it has a bit rate, and then make sure the file size is appropriate to that bitrate. Example: 128k bitrate x 240 seconds = 30,720Kbits or 3,840KBytes. You don’t have to do a whole bunch of math, but eventually you will get an idea of how big the files should be.

Avoid results that don’t make sense.
Have you ever heard of a cover band doing Flo-Rida? No! Then, why would you expect to see a “flo-rida right round [rare cover].mp3” file? There are “listeners” that sit on Limewire’s network and match infected file names to your search terms. Sometimes they try to entice further by adding stuff to make the file even more appealing. Which brings me to my next tip…

Try not to use every term in your search.
If you were to search for something like Brandy’s “Full Moon,” try just using the terms Brandy and Moon. That way, when you see “Full Moon” appear in your results despite not searching “full,” you can expect it to be what you want. If you see just “moon brandy” or “brandy moon” expect it to be some garbage.

Finally, Scan your files before you open them.
This is self explanatory. If you don’t have a anti-virus program with on demand scanning, I recommend you get one that does. There are too many free ones out there that will scan a file just from a right click menu

Is Vista really all that bad?

Have you used Vista yet?  Microsoft has been taking a lot of heat from people about how “lousy” an operating system Vista is.  The commonly used analogy is, “Windows is like Star Trek films,” meaning they usually follow a good, bad, good pattern.  Quite a few of the people I talk to about it haven’t even used it, but are channeling the opinion of their local computer expert.  It  begs the question- is it really so bad?

 In my observation, it seems that relying on the opinion of your local computer tech nerd special-geek, may seem like a good idea when it comes to, say, making a computer purchase, or selecting an appropriate system upgrade.  Furthermore those of us who have learned many of the intricacies of the Windows XP interface, do have a slightly higher than desired difficulty adjusting to Vista’s interface changes.  Windows Vista’s interface, however, wasn’t designed for people like myself.  It was designed so that your average “run-of-the-mill” end-user can figure out how to accomplish sys-admin related tasks without being a sys-admin.

 This was the same concept behind the complete redesign of the Microsoft Office Word 2007 interface.  While it can prove incredibly frustrating to someone who already is extremely adept when it comes to exploiting all of Word’s features in 2003, your average end user probably ignores the conventional menu bar until it comes time to save, and probably didn’t know word had such powerful features.

 Microsoft’s goal was to take the Settings and features and put them right in front in a plain English, “I want to change the setting for this,” kind of way.  To make life easier on the common user, (which I’m sure makes up a larger market share of windows users than the nerds!)

 Not to say that Vista is perfect!  Indeed, it has its share of flaws.  User Account Control for one was uncomfortably oppressive until they finally fixed it a little with Vista’s service pack 1 update.  I think these things will be improved upon as well in the upcoming Windows  release, but I wouldn’t expect  Windows 7 to be entirely different from Vista.  Although, by the time it releases, I expect it will be better received, since people will already be familiar with Vista by then.  Thus perpetuating the “Trek” analogy.

 -CCT