Question on a virus

[Ed62]

Some time ago, I downloaded a trial of "Spyware Doctor" on my wife's computer. We didn't buy the program, and we haven't used it for months. Evidently I never bothered to remove the program from the computer, although I thought I had. Last night, I went to shut down her computer, and here's what I found. "Spyware Doctor" had run a scan (it's supposed to be inactive), and it notified us that it found "backdoor.hupigon.gen". It is described as: "Has rootkit funcionality. It inserts itself into IE causing IE to hide itself. It also logs keystrokes and sends information to remote servers". I instructed the program to remove the virus, and I was informed that it was successfully removed.

My wife never gets on sites that are questionable. Very rarely does anyone else use her computer, although it has happened in the past. How does a virus like this get on a computer? Is it possible there never was a virus? Do we have reason for concern?

Ed

[lkazista]

Ed,

I personally think that you were watching a "Spyware Dr." commercial last night, not a real threat. They were trying to remind you that "anything could happen".

We recently installed a new version of Norton on the home computer, and my wife called me at work in a panic saying that Norton was saying something was wrong with the email and it needed to take action immediately.

She waitied until I got home, upon further review, Norton was saying that the version we had purchased did was not checking outgoing emails for virus only incoming, and that for only $19.99 more, we could download a version that would.

Maybe I am just a conspiracy theorist in your case, but I doubt it.

Lee

[Ed62]

Thanks for the reply, Lee. It makes me feel a little better.

Ed

[ironhat]

Ed, don't bite on the Spyware Doctor software. I did and it's more bloated than Norton. It causes your PC to boot incredibly slowly and I had a lot of trouble with there being a lag between screen selections and actually having the screen come up. I have it on the inactive list and use it periodically to check things out but it's no better than my AVG anti-virus and Ad-Aware spyware programs. Both are free but you can kick in for a low-end home user if you like. I bought the office version of both for work. Anyway, dump it.

[rja]

If you go on the Symantec web site, www.symantec.com, you can enter the name of the virus and see if anything comes up. In the alternative you can Google for the name of the virus and see if there are hits on the name.

[Ed62]

it's no better than my AVG anti-virus and Ad-Aware spyware programs.

Both of which I run on a regular basis. Thanks for the posts.

Ed

[MilDoc]

backdoor.hupigon.gen is a true spyware trojan program that allows others access to your computer.

http://www.trustedsource.org/TS?do=t...reat&id=247798

Spyware Doctor is supposed to be able to remove it completely. This is probably NOT an ad for Spyware Doctor. Don't be surprised that it can slip by AdAware. It's not the best.

[jussi]

Best anti-virus on the market IMO... nod32.

[bobevans]

Scan your computer with these excellent free spyware scanners.

SUPERAntiSpyware Free: http://www.superantispyware.com/supe...freevspro.html

AVG Anti-Spyware Free Edition:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-spyware/

a-squared Free:
http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/