Just downloaded a F*#&ing VIRUS. It's called "Plan Columbia". It appears to have turned all my .jpg files I've saved into Visual Basic Scripts, among other things. I'd describe more in detail, but just do god damn frustrated with it right now.

Got it off of Morpheus.


I have Win2k, and the version of McAfee wont pick it up.

When I open the VBScripts, it says Plan Columbia Virus, something about hackers, and then a bunch of scripting.


Messed with GoZilla, tried to get me to download some broswer name Linux321 at some fortunecity/plancolumbia/blahlbha.whatever site a few times. I downloaded it, and deleted it.

Virus is still here.

ALso fucked up the way windows explorer works.



Is it possible to reformat an NTFS filing system? How hard?

[url]http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/vbs.plan.a.html[/url]

You might note:  "The worm uses MAPI calls to the Microsoft Outlook application and creates messages by iterating through all addresses in the Microsoft Outlook address book."

In other words........warn everyone you have in your address book that you may have sent them this virus.

This might help:
[url]http://housecall.antivirus.com/[/url]

NTFS is no harder to format than FAT. just reformat it and reinstall Windows 2000. I have done this a million times.

When you get to the Partition Stage of Win 2K inst. delete your partitions, recreate them and Format with NTFS, then reinstall Windows 2000 on you Partition. This will assure the virus is gone. You might try rebooting after deleting your partitions to clear any memory and buffers.

The only virus that can avoid this is CIH or Chernobyl. CIH infects the Bios.

Some viruses infect just files and are relatively easy to counter and defeat.

Some infect memory space and buffers and can recreate themselves even if their files are deleted.

Some infect the boot sector and can only be killed by repartitioning and reformatting.

A hybrod that infects memory space and boot sector is why I suggested rebooting after deleting the partitions. You might even wish to shut the computer down to insure you are not reinfected. Any disks you used while infected may be infected also and should be avoided.

If you get a CIH variant, you would have to rewrite your Bios. A friend explained how to rewrite a BIOS chip, but I don't have the equipment so I won't even go into that issue.

I know I give you alot of crap, but I will help you out here.  To reformate a NTFS partition you need a small program called Delpart.exe, it's like Fdisk but is for NTFS.  It might be on your 2000CD or you can check these websites to see if they have a download...it will be free.
{url]ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt31/i386/reskit.exe[/url]

Or

[url]www.zdnet.com[/url]

Good luck

Sgtar15

What he said ^

Absolutely get Norton, McAfee sucks.

Floater, got a virus like that some time ago on Kazaa(same as Morpheus).

It also turned all jpgs to VBS scripts, looked like my MP3s were gone but fortunately they were saved.

What I can't understand is why everyone keeps insisting upon using Outlook...

Outlook is the biggest virus magnet ever created, and is also the program designed to replicate a virus.

I use Eudora Pro exclusively, and have only ever had one problem, and that was with an attached file, not some random bug that replicates and resends itself from your address book!

Get yourself a copy of Norton AntiVirus [b]corporate edition 7.5[/b]

I don't have those 'virus' problems either thanks to UNIX/Linux.

Hey kpel308 how you doing these days?

I can't believe that you guys are dumb enough to have Visual Basic or Windows Scripting Host loaded on your system.  I learned this lesson years ago.

Also, virus scanners like Norton and McAfee don't pick up trojans until they've actually been executed and already infected your system.  But utilities like "The Cleaner" -

http://[url]http://www.moosoft.com[/url]

will detect trojans and worms before you unleash them on your drive.  I've found all sorts of bad stuff like back door trojans in software I downloaded with The Cleaner that Norton passed right over.

If you need help disabling .VBS and .SCR, go here -

http://[url]http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/win.script.hosting.html[/url]

I use Outlook Express because it works well with Hotmail. But, I don't download stuff when I don't know the person and my internet is set to ask before loading scripts. So unless I do something stupid I'm protected. I also avoid anything with 2 extensions.

I got something the other day labled .pif.doc

I threw it out and e-mailed the sender and other recipients warning them.

Also, I do not keep my friends in my Address Book.

Got that right.  I prefer to refer to Outlook and Outlook Express as petri dishes for viri.  Eudora conforms to open standards without using proprietary hooks either.  Try to open your .pst or .dbx files to parse out your individual messages with wordpad or some other text editor.  Believe me, it doesn't come from your ISP looking like that.  Now try opening a .mbx file used to store Eudora's mail with wordpad.  You may never need to grab a message out of your mail client in such a manner but why make something proprietary when open standards are available and work at least as well if not better?