attack on pc

[dennis]

can anyone tell me why since yesterday i have had 8 of these on my pc?

Intrusion.Win.Messenger.exploit Attack

they were all stopped by my antivirus but iv'e never had them before?,not been looking at any*naughty* sites so whats up?

 

[GalacticaActual]

Try getting and running a program called Ad-aware or spybot search and destroy. Both are free down loads and may get rid of the problem for you.

 

[dennis]

thanks,i will do that,so you think it;s spyware?or just a new form of virus,i just havent heard of it before.

 

[GalacticaActual]

thanks,i will do that,so you think it;s spyware?or just a new form of virus,i just havent heard of it before.

Well if you have An anti virus program, you should be able to actually run it a do a scan for anything that is not suppposed to be there. If you have a problem after that then Ad-aware or spybot should do the Job. The trick is to make sure that all of your security programes are updated on a regular basis.

Also it might be an idear to use a more secure web browser such as firefox rather than the standard windows internet explorer

 

[Seth Gecko]

I think you'll find it's not a virus or spyware - it's a hacking attempt based around an exploit in the Windows Messenger program (I think you'll find it's the one built into XP rather than MSN Messenger 7). I could be wrong, but I know that there was at least one exploit in this particular component of XP.

There would normally be an update for it via the Microsoft Windows Update system - one assumes you haven't updated XP ?

 

[dennis]

yup thats the one,i have updated my windows security,lets hope it does it,thanks all.

 

[Mylo]

I actually turned off the windows messenger component to stop this. That and the anti spy programmes appear to work very well.

 

[Chumpy]

Not sure that MSN Messenger gets updated thru WindowsUpdate, you may have to download the latest version from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads

 

[Seth Gecko]

Not sure that MSN Messenger gets updated thru WindowsUpdate, you may have to download the latest version from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads

It's not actually MSN Messenger, it's Windows Messenger, the forerunner as such, which was built into XP. Same thing but different if that follows.