Win32/Parite Virus Spreading

[bahawolf]

**BEWARE: READ BELOW AND BE PREPARED**

I know of about six people, including myself, who have recieved the 'Win32.Parite.b' virus in the last 4 days, which seems to be spreading around lately. The virus infects every .exe on the system, and infects every drive as well. So, if you share files on a filesharing program, download at your own risk! Run a virus scanner at all times, and of course, don't accept suspicious files.
Oh and news on me? I lost my hard drive.. but it is under warranty and being replaced.

[filburt1]

Oh and news on me? I lost my hard drive.. but it is under warranty and being replaced.

A virus caused actual physical damage to your computer?

[0ptima]

A virus caused actual physical damage to your computer?

Take a look at the CIH virus, http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/cih.html it tried to overwrite the flash bios.

[UHN_ED]

That is still not physical damage, and it is easily reversed.

[tgillespie]

Does anyone know by chance if the latest Norton Virus Definitions include protection against this virus? I don't do much file swapping because of legal issues so I don't imagine I will have a high chance of infection.

Regarding physical damage made to a computer by a virus. I've only heard of once case where a bug infected the computer and began taking over system processes causing hard drive fault. It may of been an older hard drive and the excessive processes were just the final thread.

[bahawolf]

The virus infected my drive D, which then needed to be whiped. Drive D contained my reformat files, so now, I can not reformat.

[ManagerJosh]

It appears to be also known as
W32.Pinfi

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.pinfi.html

[IDN]

So, how do you recieve it?

[DarkDelight.net]

So, how do you recieve it?

Just a guess... kazaa

[Lumina]

Sorry for my poor English, but what does "kazaa" mean?

[Sijo]

Sorry for my poor English, but what does "kazaa" mean?

come on, you aren't that stupid you got 800 posts just on this forum, which shows that you are not the first time online...

[bahawolf]

Kazaa is a filesharing program. But actually, I wasn't infected by Kazaa. My friend had burned a program for me (It was freeware, not warez), and since the virus infects every .exe, my computer was infected when I ran the contents.

Now, this is how Kazaa and other filesharing programs will be changed:

The virus is downloaded by a user, and opened.
Now, all of their files are corrupted by the virus, and they may not know it.
Then, more people download the file.
Their computers become corrupted, and again they share.

This'll take out warez monkeys, but also innocent people.

EDIT: By the way, Kazaa is a P2P program (Filesharing).
And as for the other member, notice he doesn't speak english too well..

[Matthew Gordon]

It took out my Windows installation just recently. I don't know how I got it, it might have been my sister. Either way it infected both computers and while I successfully removed it from my sister's computer, it is still sitting on mine, though not active since I'm in Linux.

[IDN]

Can it be removed and repaired? Making the files good again?

Will making files "Read Only" stop it from effecting the files?

Besides, what does this virus do? Besides infect .exe?

[filburt1]

Read-only doesn't do crap from a security standpoint...it's insanely easy in any language to completely ignore or rewrite that attribute. Only something like Unix/Linux/Mac chmod'ing works.

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.pinfi.html

The payload looks minimally-damaging, but it affects every executable (which includes screen savers) on the system as well as trying to spread to network shares. It also sticks itself in the startup (quite redundant when you think about it).