who's heard of üõ6 ???

I just noticed that file being scanned in Avast. It’s called …humm… üõ6 (no extension), and it’s located directly under the Windows directory…

nothing on VirusTotal https://www.virustotal.com/analisis/4dd8aaa8bd9f90459d4dc82aeddf5dcd439a7cd27b70a067e2c6ca904c717c83-1270936595

when opened (with notepad) it gives

[KeyList] Count=0

edit: to make things clear, it wasn’t detected as a virus by Avast. And I just submitted it, just in case.

I am not sure what it is, but if 38 virus scanners say it to be clean than that’s a pretty legitimate file.

probably ;D but what I want to know is where that file comes from ::slight_smile: there aren’t that many legit files in Windows with no extension…some but not many, especially with a name like this.

As it seems to be a text only file it won’t harm your system.
Could be a config/setting for some program, beeing in windows directory doesn’t mean that it is related to your OS… but sure it has a strange name. If you want to investigate further, you can copy, rename it (like xxx to xxxlogos, so its easier to find again) then delete the original file and see what happens when restarting. If nothing happens you can either leave it that way or restore the renamed copy, if errors occur.
Also you can look at the date the file was created and search for other files with the same or similar date, that could give you a hint, which program created it…
asyn

Hi Logos,

Could be a remnant of a generic backdoor from the INI file, see whether there were changed to the registry,

polonus

Hi guys,

@ Asyn, I already deleted the file earlier today, rebooted and nothing happened :wink: I know it was harmless but what upsets me is I don’t know where it comes from…
@ Polonus: OK but from what INI file, for what application… It seems that’s impossible to find out. And where should I look in the registry, what am I looking for? The registry is changing all the time, no weird behavior of the system so ???

I know, what you mean, i also would want to know where it came from, if encountered on my system.
But since you already deleted it, we probably will never know, but good it’s gone. :slight_smile:
asyn

The characters correspond to ansi codeset characters - does not rule out usage as such by malcreants

ü - u diaeresis

õ - o tilde

6 - digit 6

Microsoft codepage
http://www.kostis.net/charsets/cp1252.htm

I have never seen represented in such small entity (3 character) - would say represents file but my knowledge is limited

by recall from the past vaguely (maybe wild guess)

  • the other Windows that accompanys what you see as the Windows package
  • facilitates translation of package? particularly helpful russian version?

(edited)

@ mkis: thanks for the feedback :wink: