[BabyK]

Ugh! I can't believe myself... I'm so STUPID! I was actually dumb enough to DL this thing my friend sent me. But it wasn't her it was a VIRUS.

Like the virus is called

IMG-1200.rar

then it says:

"Hey! Remember this picture of you before? lOL"

"wanna see the pics from my vacation? "

"My friend took nice photos of me.you Should see em loL!"

"Here are my private pictures for you"

And it sends an IM to all of your contacts and if they accept it then it's gonna attack them and all of their contacts also. And this all happened yesterday too. I even reinstalled MSN today hoping and praying that virus was gone but it isn't at all dude. I even did a virus scan with Avast! Anti-virus but it didnt' detect anything.

And I went on Yahoo! And did some research a bit on it and found this short article: It's old but still matters

A New Virus Attacks MSN Messenger Beta

December 27, 2005

MSN Messenger users would be in for a nasty surprise if they think that they have been successful in getting a sneak peak at the latest version of the MSN Messenger- the instant messaging system.

A variation of the Virkel instant messaging virus has been circulating amongst MSN users, posing as a leaked beta version of MSN Messenger 8, according to F-Secure Corp. the Finland based security firm. The virus uses the MSN Messenger client to send download links to all of an infected user's contacts, and connects the user's machine to a second "botnet" server, which could then be used to install unauthorized software on the machine. Victims are being infected by clicking and installing the BETA8WEBINSTALL.EXE file that is being distributed via these download links, F-Secure said. It has been said that there is nothing as MSN Messenger 8 version as such.

Microsoft has, in fact, released a beta version of its next-generation instant messaging client to a select number of users, but the software is not called MSN Messenger 8, according to a spokeswoman for the company's public relations agency. The beta software of the product, called Windows Live Messenger, was released on December 12, she said via e-mail.

Source: InfoWorld

And if you look up more stuff on this MSN Messenger Virus you'll find ALOT!

The first half of 2007 saw an 84% increase in IM attacks over the first half of 2006.

A socially engineered message is one that is written in a friendly, informal manner, that could easily be mistaken as coming from a friend. The message usually will say something like "Click here to see pics of me from vacation!" or "Is this you?" with a web address -- known as a "poison URL" -- for the recipient to click. Upon clicking the web address, the recipient is connected to a website containing active content, which is immediately downloaded to the recipient's computer. In most cases, the payload contains an installer, a number of hidden files containing text, and code which causes the same socially engineered message with poison URL to be sent to every contact on the contact list. When the message is sent to all contacts, the cycle starts again, as each contact believes they are receiving a message from a trusted friend. In this manner, IM-borne malware is capable of propagating very rapidly through company and external networks.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Messenger

I really don't know how to stop this....

Read on a site that you should run Ad-Aware or SpyBot if you come across this virus. Ah! this thing has me going paranoid now =.=;;;

edit:

PROBLEM SOLVED! (For now let's hope it STAYS that way XD)

[nevets1219]

The same way you would remove any virus applies here.

Those are some really old articles and every IM client with file transfer capabilities will probably suffer some problem with virus.

You need to find the name of the actual virus, what you listed was the infected file. Usually there are cleaners for virus that tend to spread quickly and knowing the name helps quite a bit.

What I would do is unplug yourself from the Internet and scan away. It's pretty likely you'll have to re-install the IM client and I would probably recommend un-installing it as well beforehand.

[negitoro]

You just got to be more careful about opening anything sent over IM.

A contact of mine sent me something just like this the other day. Luckily he's not someone I really hang out with so I was instantly cautious.

[kathymon.]

Hahaha thats happened to me before. Because my computer is shared between me and my brother, i went on his account, deleted mine, created a new one and got AVG and everything has been all good.
Oh yeah uninstall and re install msn aswell.
Kathy

[ohmylamb.]

I had this too!
Last April!
It was from my schoolmate.
I,too, thought that it's weird of her to send me that since we don't talk much nowadays.
Everything's going on well now.
But, MSN don't display what songs you are actually listening to right now.

[dark twilight]

This happened to me last month ><
After I had stupidly opened it, my msn started acting weird and froze so i knew it had to be a virus and not really a picture. So I restarted my computer and immediately deleted that file and did a virus scan. Everything seemed to be fine after that.

[BabyK]

Oh geez man! I just did a scan with Ad-Aware today (I have neglected to do an ad-aware scan every week =.=;;) and it found over 431 viruses. And some were Malware but i deleted them all. And then I restarted my computer. Tried the scan once more and it found 2 more viruses then Ad-Aware says "Scan must be terminated" or something...

Then i sign back onto MSN to see if anything is fine. Even when I'm offline from msn it still sends my contacts those stupid messages whatever. So when i went back onto msn i thought everything was fine but JUST NOW it went crazy again!

What do I do? I can't reboot my computer all over again i don't have the disk and whatnot... And I'm not allowed to use or even DL SpyBot =.=;;

[nevets1219]

You need to go into Safe Mode and do your scan. If you still can't remove it, find the name of the problem and Google it. There's usually manual removal instruction.

[BabyK]

Okay so I just did the Ad-Aware Virus scan on safe mode and i restarted my computer again. and opened msn hoping that stupid virus was gone but it wasn't =.=;; It's like gum stuck on a shoe dude.... I even did a search on my computer for anything with the name IMG-1200.rar or IMG-1200.zip. But no luck. Since I deleted it (good thing too)

I'm still trying to do some research... hopefully to find out a way to stop this. 2 of my friends on msn are currently trying to stop this virus also...

Suggestions are still open since i haven't found a solution yet =.=;;

what do you think of this?
http://forums.techguy.org/malware-removal-...-dunno-how.html

[skyllo]

http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?s=&...t&p=7172867

i received a message like that. before you download anything, ask first what it is for.

my friend who was in china for vacation suddenly sent me a message in pingyin. i kind of understood what she meant even though im not chinese. however it was weird that she would talk to me in chinese when we talk in english. her message went "look at my pictures." then i couldnt read the next message and i asked my other chinese friend to translate for me and he said "it means 'i dont have clothes on" then there's a file attachment. why the f would i download that?! lol

[BabyK]

^Oh geez that's creepy! O_O

I just did Avast! Anti-virus scan also and it found nothing (That's good to hear at least. no evil trojans O_O)

But... even if i uninstalled this MSN again then reinstalled it... it wouldn't make any difference. Should I just make a new MSN Hotmail account? Or do you think this is linked to a computer type of virus?

[nevets1219]

The virus isn't linked to your account, it's linked to some file(s) on your computer.

Things you can check are Startup (msconfig) and/or regedit (preferred but harder for people not familiar with it). Either Avast is wrong or it's not configured to scan all files if it thinks you don't have a virus which in fact you still do. You need to make it scan all files/folders (hidden, system) and inside archives.

[BabyK]

Problem... solved. I did a couple bunch of virus scans =.=;; But yeahs... I think the main one that did help was this free-online virus scan called "Bit-Defender" That nevets1219 helped me with x3 MUCHAS GRACIAS AMIGO~ x3

Then after the virus scan like... the size of my GB started to go down O_O Like from 14.1GB to 13.1GB to 12.GB and that was ALLLLL last night! But problem fixed! >D Killed yeah virus! Pwuahahaha!
I deleted like over 1000+ useless files one my computer when i went into Local Settings>>>Temp

Believe me they were super useless and over 3-4 years old =.=;; And there's still a couple files I couldn't move but they'll HAVE TO leave SOMETIME! lol And I empty out my recycle bin often now too x3

[COOKIE.BANDIT.]

omgsh I'm so glad I found this thread!

I was an idiot last night and I did the exact same thing as you did! I thought it was weird since why would my friend send pics in a zipped folder. and it wasn't even a jpeg, or gif file. BUT I WAS SUCH AN IDIOT!

I tried to AVG it. But I don't know if it worked The file immediately dissapeared after I opened it, so I'm not sure if I deleted it or not.
I unistalled my MSN account. I'm going to try a virus scan "bit-defender" like you did.

How do I find which file(s) the virus is attached to?


- - - - - - - - - - edit - - - - - - - - - - -

Sry BabyK, hope u dont mind if i borrow your thread for a bit

I just found the file in My Received Files folder. When I tried to delete it a window popped up that said: "Cannot delete IMG-9350: Cannot read from the source file or disk".

What does this mean and how can I get rid of it ? Someone plz help!

As far as I know, Bit-Defender said it blocked it from infecting my computer... but I want to delete it

[nevets1219]

Either terminate the running process in order to delete it or try to do it in safe-mode. It's like if you have something open, you aren't suppose to be able to delete/move it (there are exceptions of course).

[COOKIE.BANDIT.]

^^ Thank you so much nevets1219!

I took your advice and set it in safe-mode. Then I could actually delete the file. After that I ran another virus scan and nothing was detected, so hopefully the virus is gone for good.

Thanks again!

[skyllo]

someone sent me another message. it goes 'this picture of mine is hilarious. please dont tell anyone.' and it's in a zip/rar file (i didnt check.) i canceled it right away. if my coworker indeed sent a picture for me, he would have replied asking me why i declined the file.

[loveex3]

i've had a similar problem too!
my friend sent me "wanna see pictures from my vacation?"
and she sent me this file transfer thinggg.
and i was like "huh? sure.."
and i clicked it. turns out it's some virus thing.
i remember she helped me get rid of it with some site,
but i forgot! sorrry. good luck~!

[ohmylamb.]

How do you make your computer into safe mode?
I've heard about this, but nvr tried before.
If I do that, will I lose all my files?

Due to that virus, I have 300+ affected files.
It's been months, so can it still be removed?

[BabyK]

^DAAAAAANG! That's ALOT of viruses XD Hahahaha!!!! It's okay I used to have a crazy virus problem like that too x3

HOW TO GET INTO SAFE MODE (For Windows)

1. Restart your computer like how you usually do. Then when it comes back up still in blackscreen mode start pushing "F8" continuously.

2. Now a bunch of weird funky codes should come up. Don't worry it's normal.

3. Use your arrow keys to go up to safe mode (or safe mode with networking if you're going to be using an online scanner). Push ENTER.

4. And now login. And your windows should now look like a really crappy version of windows. Like window 95 or lower XD

And there you go! You can now start doing your virus scans safely ^^ AVG or Avast! is reliable (IMO).