I have to say (knock wood) that I have been having really good results, maybe two years worth, from Avast.
I don’t know what nasty site I visited last week, but my weekly Sunday Avast scan turned up 343 (!!!) files infected with “Win32-Adloader AZ (trj)” Avast allowed me to send all the little boogers to the Chest. Thanks.
Does anyone have any info on this Trojan?
They could have been on your system for a while, I noticed that the signature for this Trojan was just added to avast on 7/19/06. http://www.avast.com/eng/vps_history.html
What OS are you running? if XP I would suggest either installing ewido or running an on line scan http://www.ewido.net/en/ since it specializes in such things as Trojans. just to be on the safe side.
Thanks for the info. I assumed that I had just gotten the problem, not thinking it might have just been recognized. I had a little trouble getting the ewido page to open and, with my super slow modem, I am always a little leery of online scans.
I’ll try again when I have some time to spare.
It would be better to download the program it has a trial period and after that it reverts to the free non-resident on-demand scan only. You can then check for signature updates once a week and run an on-demand scan. This would be better than continually having to do an on-line scan.
Thank you both for your replies. I live in a rural area with telephone lines that were antiques when I moved in 35 years ago. The ewido download was estimating 33 minutes when I canceled. Humor an old Luddite and tell me if the ewido service is likely to be worth it.
In a nutshell YES, the updates are generally every day or so and are of the order of a couple of hundred Kb. A pain to get the programme on dial-up but worth its weight in gold…
I’m living in a rural area on dial-up and yes I would say it is worth while, I’ve downloaded files that are over 20MB on dial-up, a pain yes, but you have to balance that against the additional protection.
Is there any way to find out where the Adloader AZ originates from? Web pages, for instance?
And is there any way to find out what effects in particular that it could be having on an individuals PC?
Yes, it is possible to find out where it is originated.
Just look up the thing on sites from av vendors and it will tell you.
Same goes for the 2nd question.
It would be easier to do a google search for the infected file name as that often brings more information as there is no standardisation on virus naming so it could have many different virus names.