From: Tim923 on
I got this virus. Norton didn't detect it until after it was run, and then
it was too late. What went wrong? Nasty thing. It first took out my
Internet Explorer and then my email. Tim


From: Beauregard T. Shagnasty on
Tim923 wrote:

> I got this virus. Norton didn't detect it until after it was run, and
> then it was too late. What went wrong?

Several possibilities:
1. your Norton (version unknown) is out of date
2. the virus morphed and the current is not in your database
2a. it is an old virus, from 2001
2b. it morphed on November 10, 2009
3. you got a file in email and didn't scan it

> Nasty thing. It first took out my Internet Explorer and then my
> email. Tim

<http://www.google.com/search?en&q=win32.pinfi>
<http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2003-011708-2030-99>
see also the Technical Details and Removal tabs

"Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me,
Windows NT, Windows XP"

Get a better anti-virus program.
Get an operating system that is not affected by such nonsense.

--
-bts
-Friends don't let friends drive Windows
From: David H. Lipman on
From: "Tim923" <tws0923(a)hotmail.com>

| I got this virus. Norton didn't detect it until after it was run, and then
| it was too late. What went wrong? Nasty thing. It first took out my
| Internet Explorer and then my email. Tim



To answer what went wrong... In short, Norton is party to blame. It just isn't that
good.

Replace it with Avira AntiVir.

--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp


From: FromTheRafters on
"Tim923" <tws0923(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:herce0$h5l$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>I got this virus. Norton didn't detect it until after it was run, and
>then it was too late.

Anyone can take an old virus and repackage it and send it out as a
trojan. Such a trojan dropper, once executed, can drop a virally
infected file onto your file system and be "picked up" by your file
scanner - or not - and then end up infecting more files.

I suspect that such a thing has happened, do you have the original "bad"
executable (trojan) as well as some virally infected ones?

> What went wrong?

I'm guessing that your Norton failed to recognize a trojan dropper and
yet was able to detect at least one of the dropped programs as being
infected with Pinfi. I suppose it is also possible that Norton failed to
recognize one iteration of Pinfi but was successful on the next
iteration, but your statement about having run something successfully
before the detection makes me think trojan.



From: Tim923 on
I see that it's an old version, Norton 2003, but I believe I was up to date
in updates. It sure did detect win32.pinfi, but it was too late. It wasn't
email related. I downloaded something that didn't come from a nice official
webpage. So I'm partly to blame. I have to ask, would AVG free have done a
better job? Tim