Rahul Soni's blog

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How I survived a virus/trojan attack? (It was indeed a pain in the... you know what!)

How I survived a virus/trojan attack? (It was indeed a pain in the... you know what!)

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I was working with IIS at my home, and while looking at the Task Manager, I found a suspicious looking EXE running under the SYSTEM account. It was suspicious because the name of the EXE was fffccccMLP.exe. It just scared the hell out of me, since I haven't taken a backup for quite a few weeks now (yeah, I am lazy)! I started with searching this guy and found that it is inside my C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder. I tried checking the properties, but it didn't say what it did or which company it belonged to. I decided to rename this file, but it won't allow me to. I was unable to kill the program using the KILL utility. In fact, when I tried doing it... my PC just rebooted... Holy Smoke!!!!!

When my PC came back up... I wanted to check out the network connections since I was suspecting this to be a Trojan. I opened a command prompt and executed netstat -ano, and damn... my PC rebooted again. Gloomy, ain't it? And it was just the beginning!!!

Okay, I took a deep breath, and thought lets fix it...

1. Boot my PC in safe mode. Try to delete that EXE, or kill that process tree... no luck.
2. Open Registry Editor (Start -> Run and type Regedit.exe) and check out the startup programs... (check the status below for the location). These programs will be executed as a part of my booting process. I found that the culprit EXE is not listed here.

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3. So, the next step which I could think of was to click on Start -> Run, type MSConfig and hit ok. The default selection is Normal Startup. I changed it to Diagnostic Startup - Load basic devices and services only.

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4. If you switch to the Startup, you will see that every startup item is disabled, including the ones in the All Programs -> Start up folder

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5. Click on Ok and you will be prompted for a reboot. I did it, and tried renaming that EXE and killing that process. DAMNNNN... still no luck.
6. I downloaded TCPView in a hope to check my connections. As soon as I executed that... another reboot. I knew that now... instead of fixing the problem I needed to find out what that EXE was doing.
7. But before doing it, I downloaded the latest signatures of my Antivirus Software and scanned my PC again. Thankfully, it was able to recognize a few Trojans...

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8. Although, it said it cured and a reboot is required... when I rebooted my box, I still saw those files. 
9. That hinted that probably I should start with these DLLs and see if they have any co-relation with that EXE. I downloaded the Process Explorer and wanted to find who is having the handles for these FCCCBBB.DLL and AWVVT.DLL. Very soon I found that it is loaded in WinLogon. Wow, now I was in a big trouble. I tried closing the handle but it won't :-( Killing winlogon was of no use, since your OS will reboot.
10. Finally, I thought of removing them from the command prompt, In order to do that I started by inserting my Windows XP CD, booted from my CD and when the option was given to Repair, I chose to do it. It was pretty intuitive, and I ended up with a *core* command prompt. Issued a couple of Del command and got rid of those files. Oh my dear command prompt... how much I missed you!!!!!!!!

After that, when I booted, I was pretty happy to see that the fffccccMLP.exe is not launched any more. I deleted it straight away!

I am sharing this experience with all of you so that you have a few tools handy in case anything like this happens. I am not a security expert and I am not from the team who deals with viruses or trojans, so my knowledge in dealing with these problems is quite limited. Thankfully, I was able to fix this problem. If you feel that you have some nice tid-bids I could have tried, feel free to let us all know.

By the way, there two BIG lessons that I learnt from this...

1. Download Signatures everyday is not a bad option after all in the Antivirus Software. I didn't realize that my AntiVirus has had certain connection issues due to the Proxy setting and it was not able to download the signatures since I don't know when. Happy

2. TAKE BACKUP!!!!!!! I just did, and since I have practiced it, I guess I can preach! Winking

I hope this helps. Have fun Wave 
Rahul

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  • lua man lua, I don't use av software and have never ever had a virus.  And yes I do offline root kit analysis constantly just to see if I'm nuts or not!

  • Hi Troth,

    Thanks for your comments :-) Can you please tell me what is "Lua" ?

    Regards,

    Rahul

  • Even easier option ... switch to Linux / Mac OS X. No more trojans ;)

  • Hi PearlJam (VivekIyer),

    I am sorry, I love Microsoft and MS technologies way too much. I can pay this price I guess... :)

    Thanks for your comments!

    Rahul

  • lua=least-privileged user account in other words don't read email or surf the net as admin!  It means more then that but in this case it means don't surf for porn logged in as admin :)

    tr

  • Rahul,

    I have a great solution to your problem; it’s called BartPE.  This is a Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE and this is the official link: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/.  With Bart you boot to a live CD, like Linux Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org).  The BartPE CD comes with a number of utilities like Clam Antivirus and DriveImageXML (http://runtime.org).  Anyway once you boot off the CD, you are running the OS from the ram and therefore can delete or change anything on the hard drive.  This is a great solution for those viruses/Trojans that are impossible to get rid of while the Windows OS is running.

    Best regards,

    Sean Gahan

    http://seangahan.net

  • Haha...

    Thanks for the explanation. I got your point :) Must have been due to some utility which I downloaded!

    And BTW, I am married and not interested in porn ;-)

    Cheers,

    -Rahul

  • Thanks a lot for your input Sean!!! I think that's great information. I am gonna try that for sure.

    Regards,

    Rahul

  • Wonder what Anti-Virus software you use. I use Kaspersky and it runs well.

    Even if you use Linux, Anti-Virus software is a must. I use AVG for Linux Free edition for my Ubuntu.

  • Hi Li,

    I use eTrust. But actually, I admit it is my fault. I didn't check that the signatures are updated properly. By the time I realized it, it was too late. Anyhow, I have learnt my lesson :)

    Thanks for your comments though!

    Rahul

  • Sorry about the poor taste, bwtf does being married have to do with it:)

    Anyway MS has there own anti-malware solution that works almost the same as the bartpe solution, you might want to become familiar with it!

    like you say!

    "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough!"

    how flipping true!

  • Haha... man!!! Troth, I know married is not related to porn... I just wanted to let you know (I don't know why exactly!! Probably, some culture thing... I am not sure) :-) LOL

    Also, MS might be having its own anti-malware solution equivalen to bartPE but at this moment, I am not aware of it. I am mostly an ASP.NET/IIS guy. I will try to research it out, but if you could let me know the name of the software/solution... it would be great!

  • I'm surprised you still have that box up. Generally once a box is infected you can't guarantee that it is no longer affected, and we almost always recommend rebuilding the box.

    Also, next time pull the network cable before you do anything else. You can always plug that back in. ;)

    Cory

  • Yes cory! I agree with you and I guess I am lucky here. I ran the Antivirus a few times with latest signatures, and there are no signs of infection now.

    Thanks for the advice about pulling out the network cable!! I should have done it :-)

    Regards,

    Rahul

  • admittedly MS's version of the kit takes alot more work then the Bartpe's version but at least your staying true to MS

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6cd853ce-f349-4a18-a14f-c99b64adfbea&displaylang=en

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