Buffer Overflow

[jking]

My apologies for bumping this up to the top. Unfortunately, the buffer overflow issue keeps coming back. McAfee will block the buffer overflow, but, after performing a scan, it doesn't always find anything to remove. Spybot will usually find things to remove, but, as a prevention mechanism it seems to be as useless as McAfee. In other words, neither one seems to be able to keep this stuff from getting back on the system. Spybot keeps cleaning the same things off the system, too. Most of the time it's a win32.killAV-KQ virus. Spybot will clean it off, & within a week, it's gets back on the system & you have to do it again. Everytime the buffer overflow issues pops up, it takes a couple of hours to run system scans & remove the offending programs.

I have downloaded AVG, but, haven't had time to install it, yet. If that doesn't solve the problem, I will try using Firefox as the browser. The most frustrating part of this is the things McAfee & Spybot are continually cleaning off the system aren't exactly new viruses/spyware. Surely someone makes virus software that can actually prevent things from getting onto the system?

[LCHIEN]

My apologies for bumping this up to the top. Unfortunately, the buffer overflow issue keeps coming back. McAfee will block the buffer overflow, but, after performing a scan, it doesn't always find anything to remove. Spybot will usually find things to remove, but, as a prevention mechanism it seems to be as useless as McAfee. In other words, neither one seems to be able to keep this stuff from getting back on the system. Spybot keeps cleaning the same things off the system, too. Most of the time it's a win32.killAV-KQ virus. Spybot will clean it off, & within a week, it's gets back on the system & you have to do it again. Everytime the buffer overflow issues pops up, it takes a couple of hours to run system scans & remove the offending programs.

I have downloaded AVG, but, haven't had time to install it, yet. If that doesn't solve the problem, I will try using Firefox as the browser. The most frustrating part of this is the things McAfee & Spybot are continually cleaning off the system aren't exactly new viruses/spyware. Surely someone makes virus software that can actually prevent things from getting onto the system?

The Buffer overflow is the mechanism by which the malware are loaded and executed on your computer. If the overflow is detected and blocked then chances are the malware has not been loaded onto your computer and therefore it may not exist to be removed.

A buffer overflow is typically when MSIE say allocates 256 characters for a text input buffer but fails to check when that is exceeded, and the web page initializes it with a 32K string of characters - you can then have 32,000 bytes of malicious code overwritten into memory where other code used to be... when that code is executed, the malicious code is executed instead which can then bring in files it will write to your disk and registry to be executed every time you reboot.

Most known buffer overflow suceptabilities are found by hackers, used in malware attacks, then a few weeks later the software companies publish patched software which checks for the overruns and prevent them. That's why i suggested updating all your software.

[jking]

The Buffer overflow is the mechanism by which the malware are loaded and executed on your computer. If the overflow is detected and blocked then chances are the malware has not been loaded onto your computer and therefore it may not exist to be removed.

I've found that McAfee is useful for blocking the buffer overflow, but, not very useful for finding & removing the cause. Spybot has not failed to find & remove the viruses/spyware, but, neither one has prevented the programs from returning. Perhaps it's embedded in deeper than either one of these programs can find. It seems you might be suggesting that the viruses & spyware being removed are more of a distraction & not real culprit in the overflow. If that's the case, what is the likely culprit? Whenever this happens for me, it does not happen during surfing websites. It always happens when opening IE. IE then locks up completely until after running various system scans & cleaning viruses/spyware off the system.

Most known buffer overflow suceptabilities are found by hackers, used in malware attacks, then a few weeks later the software companies publish patched software which checks for the overruns and prevent them. That's why i suggested updating all your software.

Windows updates are downloaded automatically & installed right away. I check this frequently. I run Windows XP & currently use IE7 and have all available updates installed.