I hadn’t run an online scanner in a while, so I attempted to run Panda’s Active Scan which I have used before. As the Active X controls were downloading, at 50% thru the process, Avast notified me that Win32:CTX has been found at “h t t p: / / acs.pandasoftware.com/active scan.” AVAST caught it and I removed it to the chest as was recommended. I typed in the url for the Panda site, went back again and tried the website again and got the same warning from AVAST
I did a re-scan after removal in SafeMode and PC is clean. Please note that the above took place after my regular maintenance which includes AVAST scan, Spysweeper, Spybot S&D and Ad-aware. So, there was no infection prior to going to Panda. After all of this, I added SuperAntiSpyware and ran it…PC is clean.
I have a PC running WinXP, IE7 & Firefox. I have all shields up on Webroot Spysweeper incl Trojans and rootkits. I have no symptoms of anything except maybe some paranoia about all of this. Do I need to be concerned about this incident which appears to have been taken care of by AVAST A/V? Thanks. Diane
Panda doesn’t encrypt its signatures so avast will detect them so it will alarm as it has done what it is designed to do look for signatures of viruses.
I don’t like the Panda Active Scan for a several reasons and the unencrypted signatures is just one. Another is that is places all this junk in your system folder, which makes it difficult to remove as system restore protects it. When you remove the ActiveScan folder system restore copies it to a restore point and avast will detect it there also, the only way then it to disable system restore, reboot and this removes ALL restore points not just the one with the Panda signatures.
There are other on-line Virus Scanners and other useful Links Security-Ops.eu.tt
You could also use an on-line scanner to confirm, established connection to the on-line scanner of your choice and just before you do the scan, pause Standard Shield, enable after completion. You may also need to pause the Web Shield provider also.
Can’t we blame enough against Panda for do not encrypt its signatures?
What’s the purpose of releasing an on-line scanner besides making ad of its product and knowing the user has another resident, on-access, antivirus installed in his/her system?
I don’t like Panda Active Scan either.
Better will be using Kaspersky, TrendMicro, Bitdefender or, even, Symantec on-line scanning.