brandondawson.org Drupal Website Developer and Consultant

Defeat “Anti-Virus 2009″

A lot of sites are reporting on the fake anti-virus package "Anti-Virus 2009", which snookers innocent users in by planting the very malware it pretends to delete.

This has apparently infected over 400,000 computers now, and I can say that I've made that number 399,999.

The quickest way you can stop it in its tracks is to block the following domain, either at your router, or by editing your HOSTS file (in the c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc directory.)

advanced-anti-virus-scanner.com

The malware attempts to install a bogus copy of legitimate anti-virus software from that source.

From there, you should reinstall both your legitimate anti-virus software, as well as Mozilla Firefox, as the malware disables both. Also, you may want to get Spyware Doctor, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, or SpyBot S&D and enable the protective features that guard your system's registry from being altered.

Also, make sure you've added the recent fix to IE's latest security vulnerability, as you don't have to be actively running IE for this exploit to be breached.