Vundo Virus Raises Its Ugly Head Infecting Countless PCs   - 2,088 Views, 2 Comments

If your computer is suddenly doing strange things such as running very slowly, or you are suddenly getting pop ups advertising various products such as the notorious Winfixer, along with others such as Storage Protector, Sysprotect, and AntiSpywareMaster (that are really spyware, not anti-spyware), your computer may be infected with the Vundo virus. Known also as the Vundo Trojan, Virtumonde, or Virtumondo and sometimes even as MS Juan (which Vundo leaves in your registry), the Vundo virus was first discovered back in 2004, but has recently made a reappearance, infecting countless PCs. And it’s darn hard to eradicate.

Vundo can also manifest itself by throwing up pop ups that say that your computer is infected, and to fix it, you need to download any one of a number of programs such as, again, Winfixer. Whatever you do, don’t download these programs!

You may also find that you are unable to access certain websites for no apparent reason - even common websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, and Hotmail. Google searches may also stop working properly.

While many anti-virus programs may claim to remove Vundo, by all accounts the only one that has really worked well is the program called Malwarebytes. Malwarebytes is available at http://www.malwarebytes.org/. It costs $24.95. While we ourselves have not used it, it comes very highly recommended by several colleagues. One of those colleagues is Leo Notenboom, of Ask-Leo.com. He has a great write-up of malware such as viruses and trojans, and their symptoms, here.