Fighting The W32 Virus

There are few things more annoying than having a virus take up residence on your computer. No matter how many anti-virus scans we run, how well we maintain our firewalls, and how careful we are, the jerks who love to code and release these malicious little programs still manage to sneak them onto hard drives across the country with relative ease. One of the most pernicious viruses of recent years was Simile, also known as the W32 virus. This little baby burrowed into thousands of machines beginning in 2002, resisting multiple efforts to be neutralized by some of the most powerful software on the market. If you think youve got the W32 virus on this machine, this article will hopefully help you free your system from its grasp.

The first thing to do is understand the enemy. The W32 virus was written in assembly language by notorious hacker Mental Driller to target 32-bit Windows machines. When the virus executable is run (often disguised as a harmless program), it metamorphically rebuilds itself to avoid detection by virus protection software. Once that is complete, the infection process begins, with the Simile virus going through each folder on your hard drive to hunt other executables that it can infect. The virus is especially dangerous because it can detect the "bait" files that are created by anti-virus programs and makes sure not to alter them and thus give away its presence. Once the files are infected, the cycle begins anew, with the new user unwittingly spreading the toxin to other machines.

So now that you know that you have the W32 virus, what can you do about it? Unfortunately, a virus of this magnitude cannot be removed without the assistance of additional software. Thankfully, that software is available free of charge from a number of providers, including Symantec and Microsoft. However, some safety precautions must be taken before attempting to remove the virus from your computer. If you are operating in a networked environment, make sure to completely disconnect your computer from the network as well as any always-on Internet connections (such as DSL or cable) before beginning. The virus can easily hide in shared folders, and can in some cases prevent the download of removal tools, so you may want to ask a friend to burn the tool on a CD for you. Once you have run it and cleaned your system, apply the Microsoft patch that was developed to prevent further infections and upgrade your firewall and security settings to make sure that you dont get reinfected.

I hope this article has helped you in your quest to get rid of the W32 virus. Good luck and safe computing!

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