DL444

Your anti-virus advice is spot on, that is indeed how most anti-viral apps work. However, some anti-virus apps, like Norton, look out for virus-like behaviour, e.g. new/unknown virus attacks your PC and your AV does not have a signiature for it yet. But before this new virus can do any damage the AV app catches and deletes it.

About a year, or so, ago my then Norton AV 2003 caught something that was behaving like a virus and zapped it.

So all in all, it depends on the AV you are using and the facilities it has.



UK Bob

ukbobboy01,

Sounds like your talking about heuristic scanning. This is a real hit and miss way of looking for a virus. What if your virus does not display "virus like behavour". Not all virus need to open ports, send 1,000 emails etc.

If this virus has modified Limewire I doubt any heuristic type of scan is going to work unless it is tailored for Limewire or Limewire does something wierd that makes it fall within the heuristic search template.

Heuristic scanning
 

DL444

You are right, I was talking about "heuristic scanning" which, as you pointed out, is not foolproof but, along with what we currently have, is certainly better than nothing.

However, until another virus deleting technology emerges, we are stuck primarily with “signature” based AV apps, and you know the inherent problems this old technology faces.

Peace and safe internetting.



UK Bob

Thanks for the replies.

Actually I never downloaded anything with .exe or .bat or .com. That's the point. The only files I ever downloaded were .mp3, .wma, .wmv and .avi. The link that Grandpa posted brings you to a link to a PC World article that says:

"Risk Your PC's Health for a Song?

Ads and adware have a new way to get on your computer--through files that appear to be music and video. PC World has learned that some Windows Media files on peer-to-peer networks .... contain code that can spawn a string of pop-up ads and install adware. They look just like regular songs or short videos in Windows Media format, but launch ads instead of media clips." ( a quote from the article.)

I once downloaded a regular movie with an .avi extention and after running a virus scan I opened it and the system went crazy using 100% resources with warnings from Windows XP that my resourses are dangerously low. I couldn't delete the file except using software that deleted it at boot up but I later found out that Windows XP has an issue processing .AVI files and that they are going to make a patch for that in their next Service Pack update. Hopefully that's all it was.
No matter how careful, it still can be a crap shoot. But I love my music and now that I just got DSL, I love those movies :) I just wrote to my anti virus software company. Thanks for that info. Funny, they have a feature in their software called "P2P Shield" which is why I chose them in the first place. For that extra protection.