Malware is rampant these days. Just reading blogs, I daily encounter horror stories of PCs infected with some sort of spyware, Trojan, or hijacker. And this is happening to bloggers, who I suspect are more technically savvy than the average PC user.
You've certainly heard about Ad-Aware, an essential component in defending your PC from these code vermin. Lavasoft, the developer of Ad-Aware, today announced a new plug-in for their application called VX2 Cleaner which is designed to remove a particularly nasty and difficult to remove piece of malware by the same name.
If you're not running Ad-Aware, download and install it now. Check for updates daily (they're very busy at Lavasoft) or subscribe to their update notification newsletter. Or consider ponying up for the paid version - AdAware Plus which will automatically scan your PC on a schedule, update itself automatically and actively prevent your PC from becoming infected.
While you're at it, download this plug-in as well. There's nothing like the peace of mind you get when the scan (which takes seconds) comes back clean. And, if you're unfortunate enought to have picked up this bug, you now have the tool you need to remove it from your system.
Lavasoft's new plug-in VX2 Cleaner detects the malware VX2 and offers you the ability to remove it from your computer. Some users have experienced a very difficult variant of VX2 which cannot be removed by Ad-Aware. For those users which have this variant, we have developed a plug-in to help you remove this VX2 variant.
This VX2 variant registers itself in a way, which gives it system privileges. It also prevents the user from viewing this information by removing the user's rights to do so. Furthermore it constantly monitors the registry and prevents any attempts to remove its associated values. This makes it very difficult for the user to manually remove it.
The VX2 Cleaner works with all editions of Ad-Aware 6 build 181.
1. I've tried Ad-aware, and I must say.. it left my computer not much different than it was before. It found maybe 4 or 5 spyware apps. I work for Gateway Tech Support, and we carry a product called Webroot Spysweeper. We were recently all given free full-version copies of it, and let me tell you: This makes Ad-Aware look like malware. It found over 6,000 entries, cleaned them all, and I havent had a trace of spyware since. But, if you wall want to be cheap, and use the crappy free options that are available.. go right ahead. But I think that the $29.99 Spysweeper would be a steal at twice that price.
Posted at 4:57AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Dan