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The one thing that never changes in IT is the fact that everything is constantly changing.  In the past, people had to watch out for viruses.  Then it was spyware, and then it was browser hijackers.  Next came the Trojan, a program, that when opened would release either a virus, spyware or both.  Lastly, we heard about phishing, an attack that tricked the end user into giving out personal information that can lead to identity theft.

Recently The Village Geek has been flooded by computers that are infected with what researchers are calling fraudware.  Fraudware is software that tries to frighten the end user into purchasing protection from… itself.  In the old days they called it extortion.

The current rash of fraudware is called Antivirus 2008; it is available in several varieties, including XP Antivirus 2008, XP Antivirus 2009 (the latest version!), MS Antivirus and probably more.  This is an actual program that installs itself on your system in the same way spyware installs, without your knowledge or permission.  Antivirus 2008 then shows up on your task bar as a warning icon that looks almost identical to the Windows Security Center shield and it shows an “X” or an exclamation mark.  Pop up bubbles will warn you that an infection has been found.  If you ignore the pop ups the program will pop up full screen and simulate a virus scan showing multiple infections.  The program will show you all the problems and then it will explain that you must purchase the full version for $50 in order to clean these infections.

Here are some typical warning messages:

Privacy Violation alert!

XP antivirus detected Privacy Violation. Some program is secretly sending your private data to untrusted internet host. Click here to block this activity by removing threats (Recommended).

Or

System files modification alert!

Some critical system files of your computer were modified by malicious program. It may cause system instability and data loss. Click here to block unauthorized modification by removing threats (Recommended).

The beauty of the scam is that (at least so far) none of the major antivirus and antispyware programs are picking this thing up.  Once you pay your money the program doesn’t clean anything and on some versions it will actually release a flood of spyware or Trojans into your system.  Eventually you will no longer be able to use your system as the Antivirus 2008 will not allow you to get past its interface except to follow the link where they will allow you to repurchase the software in hopes of ridding yourself of the menace.

Obviously if you have paid these crooks for the full version you will need to contact your credit card company and stop payment as soon as possible.

The early version of this fraudware had an uninstall routine, which would remove it from the “Add and Remove Programs” applet in the control panel, but did not remove the program.  The newest versions don’t bother with the extra steps, they’ve got you and they aren’t going to let go.

Below are some typical processes, files and registry entries that must be removed in order to clean Antivirus 2008 off your system.  You should be aware that editing the registry should only be done by experienced technicians, and there is no guarantee that these files are the only ones on your system.  Comparing your running processes in the Windows Task Manager against this list will help you determine if this is an issue on your system.

Associated (XP) Antivirus 2008, XP Antivirus 2009, and XP Antivirus Processes

Antvrs.exe

AntvrsInstall.exe

AntvrsInstall[1].exe

Win Antivirus 2008.exe

av2008xp.exe

Antivirus-2008.exe

xpa_2008.exe

Associated (XP) Antivirus 2008, XP Antivirus 2009, and XP Antivirus Files:

c:Program FilesXP Antivirus

c:Program FilesXP Antivirusxpa.exe

c:Program FilesXPAntivirus

c:Program FilesXPAntivirusXPAntivirus.exe

c:WINDOWSsystem32scui.cpl

%UserProfile%DesktopXP Antivirus 2008.lnk

%UserProfile%Start MenuXP Antivirus 2008

%UserProfile%Start MenuXP Antivirus 2008Uninstall XP Antivirus 2008.lnk

%UserProfile%Start MenuXP Antivirus 2008XP Antivirus 2008.lnk

%UserProfile%Application DataMicrosoftInternet ExplorerQuick LaunchXP Antivirus 2008.lnk

c:WINDOWSkrln32.exe

c:WINDOWSsystem32scvh0st.exe

c:Program FilesCommon Filestrjdwnl.dll

c:WINDOWSshlext32.exe

Associated (XP) Antivirus 2008, XP Antivirus 2009, and XP Antivirus Windows Registry Information:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareXP antivirus

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftware

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001ServicesXPAntivirusFilter

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesXPAntivirusFilter

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerBrowser Helper

Objects{4e7bd74f-2b8d-469e-dcf7-f96da086b434}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerBrowser Helper

Objects{6C6B8C69-9285-4D94-8492-9E920C8C2B65}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerBrowser Helper

Objects{74f25a2c-22b3-4023-8f1a-ca616c30a8b5}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerBrowser Helper

Objects{9a19966f-ae0e-4699-8cce-9b6f5f1c352c}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerBrowser Helper

Objects{D714A94F-123A-45CC-8F03-040BCAF82AD6}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstallXP antivirus_is1

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun “XP Antivirus”

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun “mmnext06″

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun “shellbn”

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun “System”

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun “Windows Framework”

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun “”

Typically I would refer you to links on the internet that may be helpful at this point, but every site I can find is busy attempting to sell you a solution, or worse, attempting to infect you.  At one point the top paid advertisement on the right side of a Google search was for Antivirus 2008.  Tread carefully here folks, or just bring it to The Village Geek and let us clean this mess up for you.

What are some of the leading companies in the antivirus software market in the United States? Believe it or not, there are four of them. They are: Symantec which creates Norton Antivirus, Computer Associates or CA dealing in E-trust, McAfee and Trend Micro which manufacturers are PC-cillin. These companies have a huge share in the market.

Big software producer Microsoft is also planning to break into the market. In 2003, Microsoft obtained the rights to GeCad software, a Romanian company based in Bucharest. Microsoft also obtained two more companies: Giant Company Software, which developed behavior based computer security. They designed and came up with solutions for spyware. Sybari Software was also bought out. They were dealing with the ways of antivirus, and the filtering of spam and phishing.

Many industry watchers are waiting to see how Microsoft and Bill Gates will compete. They suspect that the giant software company when take a huge control in the antivirus market by bundling the software to its operating system… free of charge. Gates already has a huge lead when it comes to the word processing systems and the Internet web browsers.

There are many antivirus software vendors worldwide. They have some regional domination and are slowly showing their colors to others. Some of these antivirus companies are: Avira of Germany, Sophos of UK, AhnLab of South Korea and SoftWin in Romania.

These companies have independent testers like Virus Bulletin, West Coast Labs Checkmark Services and ICSA Labs. Some of the vendors will offer their software as freeware; others will be marked as shareware…meaning it must be bought.

Despite the overwhelming antivirus software, the market is not at all clear and the world is changing fast. It will be with great effort to meet head on with the viruses that seem to be appearing in greater numbers each day. They not only seem to increase but are becoming more complex each one is being released.

Even with this knowledge, not all companies will have the necessary resources that is required to steer forward with the challenges that will lie ahead.

There are hundreds of sample viruses that arrive to these companies. It seems that there is an 11% increase each year with the number of viruses that pop up. Their creators have made them even smarter than previous ones plus the viruses tend to move through computers even more quicker. They will hide by renaming themselves to avoid detection.

Remember no antivirus software can protect your computer 100 percent of the time since there are new viruses occuring every day. Steps should still be taken to protect your files from any type of invasion. Antivirus software are effective for viruses that are known and may save you tons of money in the long run.

The computer virus has been in existence for a very long time now and it has become very popular as developers are always seeking new ways to curb this dangerous plague. Computer systems are becoming very popular with the increase of time, almost every home has a computer system, so if we should calculate the number of computers in the world, the result might be equal to the number of people existing in the whole world.

With the wide spread of computers has come the increase of the transmission of computer viruses around the world, this is enabled by the use of the internet. Since the advent of the world wide web,and its popularity, the issue of computer viruses have become wide spread, almost without restriction. This was not the case initially, without the internet, the transmission of virus was only manual; it was only carried from one floppy drive to the other and that can be handled by scanning the disk for virus before use.

The popularity of the internet has brought with it a lot of harm and dangers; it has increased the transmission of the virus, now it is so easy to get a virus into your system. A virus can be contacted through an email, or even an attached file with the email message; you can contact a virus by downloading or through any other activity on the internet. This has kept software developers very busy, trying to create better protection for the different viruses that come up every day.

Once a virus get its way into your computer system it opens it up to a lot of dangers and can eventually crash your hard disk, this is a problem that is growing at an increasing rate. It must be curbed with the available protection to safe guard your computer systems.

Shielding your Computer System from Virus

Whenever you want to set up a computer system, the antivirus is always a very important software to be installed, in fact there is no computer system without an antivirus software, because this has become an important part of every computer. The need for this antivirus software is because of the fear of the risk experienced from the transmission of the virus, as a result every body now protects their systems from the different types of viruses with the use of the antivirus software.

If you want to shield your computer system from the attack of virus, you should do the following:

1. You should start by analyzing the present antivirus software used on the system, that is if it’s not a new system, but, for a new system you should get a suitable protection for it. After your analysis, get the most suitable shield to fight any virus attack on your system. An important thing to note is the kind of network the computer is operating within and more importantly you should know whether it is connected to the internet. Be sure to choose an antivirus software that shields your system from all the different types of virus and can also dael with spyware and others. In other words, get the best antivirus software.

2. Secondly, always make sure you update your antivirus, as this will give a constant assurance of maximum prtection. If you choose a good antivirus product, it gives an effective protection that provide instant scanning of all files, email and other features of the system, covering up every area without leaving out anything.

3. Scan every additional program that you install into your system.

4. The files that are attached to the messages you receive on the internet should be scanned before opening.

5. Have a current back up of all your program files consistently.

Getting to the basics

There is no dearth of the antivirus software obtainable in today’s tech-savvy market. These are available in various versions, be it freeware, sharewares, or even meant for purchase. You can do that basic research prior to going ahead with your choice. Antivirus software is always based on one’s need and what they look for. Most often the licensed ones are available as a trial before you can decide to go ahead with it. However, some trial version software cannot be easily uninstalled and hence, it is always safe invoking system restore facility prior to going about them. Check some antivirus programs listed below. These are based and classified depending upon several parameters such as cost, utility, service to customers and efficiency.

1. Shield Pro 2006

Shield Pro 2006 was called ViRobot Expert initially, and is developed by PCSecurity Shield. PCSecurity Shield makes sure to give right online support along with updates. They have a patch of less than three hours for any new virus and promise to fix it within five hours of its emergence. It allows viruses being scanned robotically.

2. BitDefender 10 Standard

Manufactured by softwin, Bitdefender 10 Standard provides shield from spam, viruses, spyware and also guard peer-to-peer applications. It provides total email security and heuristics that checks programs within a virtual PC for identifying mysterious viruses through viruses, worms and other malwares. A year of free of charge updates and live technical assistance by means of internet and telephone is available along with latest virus signatures. Tested and approved by ICSA, West Coast labs, Virus Bulletin checkmark, it has been certified to detect and eliminate viruses devoid of generating false positives. In the recent review of Toptenreviews.com, it has been No.1 amongst antivirus software.

3. Kasperkey antivirus personal 6.0

Kasperkey antivirus is easy to use and install. It provides you with three levels of protection for making a choice. With a minimal load on CPU, updates are carried on as repeatedly as every hour. Technical Assistance 24/7 and a two tier email shield attribute are other added traits. Kasperkey has passed West Coast labs and ICSA 2005 checkmark levels 1 and 2 and has covered VB 100% test. It has been silver rated by toptenreviews.com.

4. PC-Cillin by Trend Micro

PC-cillin Internet Security has been released by Trend Micro. It presents with antivirus security along with a personal firewall for shielding against Trojans, viruses, worms and hackers. Furthermore, it has features by which it removes spyware, phishing attacks, blocks spam, and also prevent thefts.

5. AVG antivirus

Grisoft has provided with a free edition of AVG antivirus designed especially for home users. All you would need to do is download it from the manufacturer’s website; and that is free of cost. People are usually skeptic about relying on the quality and dependability of free software. However AVG antivirus has proved to be popular among the available free downloads. This software is preferred for home computing though it provides no server version or technical support, as it is entirely free of charge with no obligation from the service providers.

Protecting your computer from a virus is getting harder and harder each day. While it may border on the paranoid, it goes without saying that you can’t leave your guard down for one second. Even corporate giant Microsoft has found its own systems compromised on more than one occasion.

Remember the “good old days”, before the advent of the Internet and downloadable programs? Life was simple then in terms of computer viruses. With the primary way in which a virus could be transmitted being limited to floppy disks, the ability to catch and eradicate the virus was a lot easier. By today’s standards, it used to take quite a while before a virus was able to infect a computer and slow down the system. The antivirus software of that time was typically able to identify and eradicate viruses before they caused too much damage. Additionally, computer users were pretty savvy on how to protect themselves in terms of scanning all floppy disks before copying them to our desktop.

The Internet helped change all that. The Internet provided a conduit by which viruses could move from host to host with lightening speed. No longer could a computer user just worry about floppy disks as points of entry, but they now had to worry about email, email attachments, peer-to-peer file sharing, instant messaging, and software downloads. Today’s viruses can attack through multiple entry points, spread without human intervention, and take full advantage of vulnerabilities within a system or program. With technology advancing everyday, and the convergence of computers with other mobile devices, the potential of new types of threats also increase.

Protecting Your Computer

Luckily, the advancement of antivirus software has kept pace with current virus threats. Antivirus software is essential to a computer’s ability to fend off viruses and other malicious programs. These products are designed to protect against the ability of a virus to enter a computer through email, web browsers, file servers and desktops. Additionally, these programs offer a centralized control feature that handle deployment, configuration and updating.

A computer user should remain diligent and follow a few simple steps to protect against the threat of a virus:

1. Evaluate your current computer security system.

With the threat of a new generation of viruses able to attack in a multitude of ways, the approach of having just one antivirus software version has become outdated. You need to be confident that you have protected all aspects of your computer system from the desktop to the network, and from the gateway to the server. Consider a more comprehensive security system which includes several features including antivirus, firewall, content filtering, and intrusion detection. This type of system will make it more difficult for the virus to penetrate your system.

2. Only install antivirus software created by a well-known, reputable company.

Because new viruses erupt daily, it is important that you regularly update your antivirus software. Become familiar with the software’s real-time scan feature and configure it to start automatically each time you boot your computer. This will protect your system by automatically checking your computer each time it is powered up.

3. Make it a habit to always scan all new programs or files no matter from where they originate.

4. Exercise caution when opening binary, Word, or Excel documents of unknown sources especially if they were received during an online chat or as an attachment to an email.

5. Perform regular backups in case your system is corrupted. It may be the only way to recover your data if infected.

Recommended Antivirus Software

There are numerous applications available to consumers. With a little research, you can pick the program that is right for you. Many programs provide a trial version which allows you to download the program and test its abilities. However, be aware that some anti-virus programs can be difficult to uninstall. As a precaution make sure to set up a System Restore point before installing.

Here are a few programs which typically receive high marks in terms of cost, effectiveness, ease of use, and customer service.

The Shield Pro 2005™ provides virus protection and hacker security through ongoing support and updates. When a virus breaks out, The Shield Pro 2005™ promises to provide a patch within 2-3 hours and a fix for the virus within 5 hours. You can set your computer to update viruses weekly and run a complete virus scan.

BitDefender 9 Standard provides antivirus protection, as well as Peer-2-Peer Applications protection, full email protection, and heuristics in a virtual environment. This provides a new security layer that keeps the operating system safe from unknown viruses by detecting malicious pieces of code for which signatures have not been released yet.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 5.0 program is simple to install and use. The user only needs to choose from three levels of protection. It allows updates as frequently as every hour while promising not to disrupt your computer. The program also offers a two-tier email protection feature and round-the-clock technical support.

PC-cillin Internet Security combines antivirus security and a personal firewall—for comprehensive protection against viruses, worms, Trojans, and hackers. It also detects and removes spyware and blocks spam. It even guards against identity theft by blocking phishing and pharming attacks.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free downloadable antivirus program that has received high marks for its reliability. In the past, free downloadable antivirus programs have been viewed skeptically because of issues relating to its reliability. However, AVG from Grisoft, remains one of the best-known free anti-virus programs available. While AVG can not be installed on a server operating system and there is no technical support, it still makes a good choice for many home computer users. The best part is that since it is free, you can try it with no further obligation necessary.