Tools for identifying and removing viruses, worms and other malware

In connection with my post on detecting infection of computer viruses or worms that uses autorun.inf to spread itself, the following are some of the free tools that you can use for detecting and even removing infections of viruses, worm and other malware infections like spyware and adware.

1. TrendMicro HijackThis - this is a free tool / utility which quickly scans your computer to find settings that may have been change by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs. This tool generates a log file that allows you to view currently programs or processes running on your system. This gives you idea on what are the programs that runs every time you start your computer. It also allows you to remove a specific entry on your system registry but take note: HijackThis can’t determine good or bad programs.



Download URL: http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en...kthis/download

2. Microsoft Windows Malicious Removal Tool - a free tool from Microsoft that checks your computer for prevalent malicious software - such as Blaster, Sasser and Mydoom.



Download URL: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

3. SmitFraudFix.exe - a freeware by S!Ri created to remove rogue anti-spyware applications that utilize Trojans to issue fake taskbar security alerts or that change your background in order to scare you into purchasing the full commercial version of their software. I use this program to remove the infection of SpySheriff / Winstall.exe. You can find a detailed instruction from BleepingComputer.com regarding this tool. You better read it before using the tool.



Download URL: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/resources/link243.html

That’s all for now and I hope this helps you. Please remember to read all the details of the free tools before doing anything with your computer to avoid unnecessary results. Good luck!

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REMOVING AUTORUN.INF VIRUS & VIRUSES THAT USE AUTORUN.INF

There are several viruses that uses the autorun.inf to spread itself such as the Bacalid (hides itself in ctfmon.exe) and the RavMon.EXE. These viruses set its file attributes to System+Hidden+Read-Only attributes so some anti-viruses will have a hard time detecting or finding them. These viruses save itself in the root directory of every available drives of the current infected computer and runs itself every time you Double-Click the drive. In USB Sticks and CDs that are infected by the virus runs automatically especially if drive autorun is enabled for the current drives (which is usually by default, autorun for drives are enabled).

Autorun.INF is usually used by CD Installers to autoplay their installations but Hard disks by default should not have AUTORUN.INF in the drive.

Now, it is possible that your computer is infected by those viruses if you try to display the content of the your computer through command prompt, using the dir /ah command. You will see the following window if you try this:


You will see from this window that drive C contains a hidden file autorun.inf, this is a possibility that the computer is infected. Now to erase this, restart your window to Safe Mode Command Prompt. (Do this by rebooting your computer and pressing F8 before windows go out and select from the boot menu). On drive C and other drives type the following commands: 1. attrib -h -r -s autorun.inf 2. del autorun.inf

Do this steps to other drives to disable the autorun.inf .

Disable AUTORUN from Registry
Now you can disable the AUTORUN for all drives by configuring the registry. Open the registry by typing regedit.exe to the command prompt (if your still at the command prompt) or execute it in Run. Look for the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer as shown below:



Double-click the NoDriveAutorun DWORD entry and type the value HEX: FF (255 in Decimal). (If the NoDriveAutorun does not exists, you can creat it by right-clicking the right side area of the regedit window, then click New->DWord Value -> type NoDriveAutorun) Close the registry and restart the computer. This procedure will disable all the autorun for all drives of your computer and at least will prevent the autorun function of infected USB drives or CDs and avoid the infection of viruses like the Bacalid and RavMon.exe.

Update:

If you want to prevent viruses that uses autorun.inf to infect your USB flash drive, try to do this:

1. Open your flash drive via Command Prompt (do this via Start->Run->cmd.exe)

2. Change your logged drive to your USB flash drive (e.g. if your drive is at drive E: then type E: on the command prompt then press enter)

3. Create a folder named: AUTORUN.INF on the root directory of your flash drive. (to do this type the command: MD\AUTORUN.INF). If an error: a subdirectory already exists… shows, try to follow the instruction above to remove existing autorun.inf before doing this instruction.

The reason why this will avoid future infection is that autorun.inf viruses usually generates a file autorun.inf. Having an AUTORUN.INF folder on the root directory of your drives will make virus programs unable to create their own autorun.inf file, virus can’t even overwrite..

Try also New fake Anti-Spyware removal

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Kadhafi's Office been hit by the Air Strike

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's office in his immense Tripoli residence was destroyed in an air strike early Monday, an AFP journalist said.
A Libyan official accompanying journalists at the scene said 45 people were wounded, 15 seriously, in the bombing. He added that he did not know whether there were victims under the rubble.
"It was an attempt to assassinate Colonel Kadhafi," he affirmed.
A meeting room facing Kadhafi's office was badly damaged by the blast.
NATO warplanes had already late Friday targeted the Bab Al-Aziziya district, where the presidential compound is located.
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Conflict between Borders [Thai-Cambodian borders]

Cambodia and Thailand exchanged heavy weapons fire for the third straight day on Sunday, officials said, after fierce fighting on their joint border left 10 soldiers dead.
Thousands of civilians have fled both sides of the disputed jungle frontier because of the fighting, which has shattered a tense two-month lull in hostilities.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for a ceasefire and said the neighbours should launch "serious dialogue" to resolve the dispute, according to a spokesman.
Thai villagers sheltering in makeshift tents in Prasat district, Surin province, told how they raced from their homes in fear when clashes began in the neighbouring border district of Phanom Dong Rak on Friday.
"When a shell fell next to my house, I knew I had to run away," said Somjai Lengtamdee from Baan Khaotoh village.
"I was so worried about my three children. We were separated and it took me all day to locate them all. I can only hope that the war ends soon. I'm so scared," the 37-year-old told AFP.
Somdee Suebnisai, a local official for Phanom Dong Rak said there were 16 camps in the area providing refuge to more than 18,000 people and the number was expected to rise to 20,000 by Sunday evening.
On the Cambodian side, the National Committee for Disaster Management told AFP that 12,000 people had been evacuated.
Cambodian villager Neb Oeuth and her six children were among those seeking shelter in a pagoda in Samrong, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of the unrest.
"Many bombs landed nearby my village and we were afraid. I have no idea when we will be able to return," she told AFP.
Cambodian field commander Suos Sothea told AFP the country's army had "suffered no casualties" in Sunday's fighting.
"The situation is quiet for now but a large-scale fight could start again at any moment. It depends on the Thai side," he said.
Thailand has also said no one was killed on Sunday.
Six Cambodian troops and four Thai soldiers were killed in the first two days of hostilities.
It is the first serious outbreak of fighting since February, when 10 people were killed near the 900-year-old Hindu temple Preah Vihear.
The latest clashes have taken place near a different group of temples more than 100 kilometres away from Preah Vihear.
Both countries have accused each other of sparking the violence.
"We have responded with machine guns and artillery, not gas or an invasion of Cambodian airspace," said Thai army spokesman Sunsern Kaewkumnerd, referring to earlier Cambodian claims that Thailand used "poisonous gas" and flew aircraft "deep into Cambodia's airspace".
Thailand recently admitted using controversial Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, designed to burst into bomblets, during the February fighting but insisted it did not classify them as cluster munitions.
On Sunday Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Thailand was willing to hold bilateral talks and accused Cambodia of trying to "internationalise" the conflict.
Phnom Penh has asked for outside mediation, but Thailand opposes third-party intervention.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa is expected to travel to both countries on Monday for talks on the conflict.
Jakarta, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional bloc, has called for an immediate end to the violence.
The neighbours agreed in late February to allow Indonesian observers near Preah Vihear, but the Thai military has since said they are not welcome.
Ties between the two countries have been strained since Preah Vihear -- the most celebrated example of ancient Khmer architecture outside Cambodia's Angkor -- was granted UN World Heritage status in July 2008.
The World Court ruled in 1962 that the temple belonged to Cambodia, but both countries claim ownership of a 4.6 square kilometre (1.8 square mile) surrounding area.

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Japan Soldier Search for unrecovered bodies

Soldiers prodded marshy ground with slender poles and cleared mounds of rubble by hand Monday as 25,000 troops mounted Japan's largest search yet for the bodies of nearly 12,000 people missing in last month's earthquake and tsunami.
The operation was the third intensive military search since the March 11 disaster, which splintered buildings, flattened towns and killed up to 26,000 people along Japan's northeastern coast. With waters receding, officials hope the team, which also includes police, coast guard and U.S. troops, will make significant progress during the two-day operation.
In the town of Shichigahamamachi, a line of about two dozen Japanese soldiers walked in unison across soggy earth and muddy pools, plunging their poles about 2 feet (60 centimeters) into the muck to ensure that they don't miss any bodies buried below.
The search focused on a marsh drained in recent weeks by members of the army's 22nd infantry regiment using special pump trucks.
Several dozen other soldiers cleared mountains of rubble by hand from a waterfront neighborhood filled with gutted and teetering houses. Four people in the neighborhood were missing, said 67-year-old Sannojo Watanabe.
"That was my house right there," he said, pointing to a foundation with nothing atop it.
He surveyed the neighborhood: "There's nothing left here."
In all, 370 troops from the regiment were searching for a dozen people still missing from Shichigahamamachi. The regiment had been searching the area with a far smaller contingent, but tripled the number of troops it was using for the two-day intense search, said Col. Akira Kun itomo, the regimental commander.
The search is far more difficult than that for earthquake victims, who would mostly be buried in the rubble, said Michihiro Ose, a spokesman for the regiment. The tsunami could have left the victims anywhere, or even pulled them out to sea.
"We just don't know where the bodies are," he said.
Bodies found so many weeks after the disaster are likely to be unrecognizable, black and swollen, Ose said.
"We wouldn't even know if they would be male or female," he said.
A total of 24,800 soldiers — backed by 90 helicopters and planes — were sent to comb through the rubble for buried remains, while 50 boats and 100 navy divers searched the waters up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) off the coast to find those swept out to sea.
"It's been more than a month since the massive earthquake and tsunami, but we still have lots of people still missing," Defense Ministry spokesman Norikazu Muratani said. "We want to recover them and return them to their families."
More than 14,300 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 11,900 remain missing. The military's first intense sweep for bodies uncovered 339, while its second turned up 99 more, Muratani said. Numbers for Monday's search were not immediately available.
After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, bodies turned up along the Indonesian coast for several months afterward as people cleared debris in reconstruction efforts. However, 37,000 of the 164,000 people who died in Indonesia simply disappeared, their bodies presumably washed out to sea.
Last week, two undersea robots provided by the nonprofit International Rescue Systems Institute conducted five-day searches in waters off Japan's northeastern coast near three tsunami-hit towns.
The robots found cars, homes and other wreckage in the sea, but no bodies, said Mika Murata, an official with the institute.
The Japanese government has come under criticism for its response to the quake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster, with some members of the country's opposition urging Prime Minister Naoto Kan to resign.
Members of Kan's ruling party won only three of 10 elections held over the weekend, mostly for local government posts.
The losses came two weeks after Kan's party lost nearly 70 seats in an election for prefectural assemblies.
On Monday, Kan stressed to a sometimes hostile parliament that his government was doing everything it could to gain control of the radiation leaks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which has prompted the government to evacuate residents from a 20-kilometer (12-mile) area around the crippled reactors.
"The nuclear accident is still ongoing," he said. "The top priority right now is to stabilize it."

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6.2 Magnitude Quake hit in Indonesian Island Sulawesi

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Monday, the US Geological Survey said.
The quake hit at a shallow depth of nine kilometres (five miles) at 2307 GMT around 75 kilometres southeast of the nearest main city of Kendari, the USGS said.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where the meeting of continental plates causes high seismic activity, and is frequently hit by earthquakes.


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HongKong Airlines Added a new training simulation to the cabin crew

In Hong Kong

Besides of in-flight services and safety training, All cabin crew of Hong Kong Airlines well be added a new training simulation. This is the first time in the history of Airlines company to teach a Kung Fu Lesson in a "Bruce Lee Style" to all crew members during flight operations.

They been trained in Wing Chun Martial Arts a Close-Range Combat that includes the striking and grappling which is one of the most important "Combat Skills" that well help you in a "Emergency Situation."

According to the Hong Kong Airlines, Corporate Communications, General Manager Eva Chan, this training well help to protect the other passenger and the crew from the troublesome passengers like terrorist. They are hoping that other Airlines Companies would follow this kind of training for the benefits and safety to all passengers.

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Mortal Kombat 9 Official

Debut !! first teaser-trailer for "Mortal Kombat 9"
from this years E3
Mortal Kombat might still see a release in 2010 for PS3 and XBox 360.
official site: http://www.themortalkombat.com/
more details as soon as we get them
used with permission from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

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WinRAR 4.00 Professional

WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.
Just download it and install it! No activation Needed!

WinRAR is a powerful archive manager (Win32, Linux, Mac). RAR files can usually compress content by 8 percent to 15 percent more than ZIP files can. WinRAR is a powerful compression tool with many integrated additional functions to help you organize your compressed archives. It can backup your data and reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.

WinRAR puts you ahead of the crowd when it comes to compression. By consistently creating smaller archives, WinRAR is often faster than the competition. This will save you disc space, transmission costs AND valuable working time as well. WinRAR is ideal for multimedia files. WinRAR automatically recognizes and selects the best compression method. The special compression algorithm compresses multimedia files, executables and object libraries particularly well.

Features of WinRAR:

* Using WinRAR puts you ahead of the crowd when it comes to compression by consistently making smaller archives than the competition, saving disk space and transmission costs.
* WinRAR provides complete support for RAR and ZIP archives and is able to unpack CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, 7Z, Z archives.
* WinRAR offers a graphic interactive interface utilizing mouse and menus as well as the command line interface.
* WinRAR supports NTFS file security and data streams.
* WinRAR is easier to use than many other archivers with the inclusion of a special "Wizard" mode which allows instant access to the basic archiving functions through a simple question and answer procedure. This avoids confusion in the early stages of use.
* WinRAR offers you the benefit of industry strength archive encryption using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with a key of 128 bits.
* WinRAR supports files and archives up to 8,589 billion gigabytes in size. The number of archived files is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.
* WinRAR offers the ability to create selfextracting and multivolume archives.
Recovery record and recovery volumes allow to reconstruct even physically damaged archives.
* WinRAR features are constantly being developed to keep WinRAR ahead of the pack.

Compatible with:All Windows (32/64-bit)


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Angelina and Brad is looking for a new Nanny! Are you Qualified?

The couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are currently advertising for a fulltime child carer to look after their brood of six children. The Hollywood star couples offer a top end salary of $150,000 per annum for the candidates. A British Source Newspaper TheSun said that "Not only have Brad and Angelina got to be able to trust the nanny completely with the kids but the new carer must also respect the family's privacy," Angelina and Brad who have three biological and three adopted children from a range of different countries together are looking for a qualified carer with a degree in education or child development.

Most Qualified Nanny’s must have this:

The applicant must also speak a minimum of two languages, including the native tongue of the child they will look after.

While biological daughter Shiloh, four, and twins Knox and Vivienne, two, will grow up with English as their main language, adopted son Maddox, nine, hails from Vietnam. Daughter Zahara, five, was adopted from Namibia, while six-year-old Pax was born inChina.

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