Worm

I have always been very careful with my laptop. I try not to upload or download unknown files, songs, pictures, etc. Unfortunately, I do not have the notebook with me 24-7. Today, I got home from work to find that my laptop has been infected with the worm Brontok.

What is Brontok?
From http://www.microsoft.com/security/encyclopedia/details.aspx?name=Win32%2fBrontok -- Win32/Brontok is a family of mass-mailing e-mail worms. The worm spreads by sending a copy of itself as an e-mail attachment to e-mail addresses that it gathers from files on the infected computer. It can also copy itself to USB and pen drives. Win32/Brontok can disable antivirus and security software, immediately terminate certain applications, and cause Windows to restart immediately when certain applications run. The worm may also conduct denial of service (DoS) attacks against certain Web sites.

I hate this worm!!! I tried a few times to clean it out but it insiduously finds its way back into my laptop. I was successful in my previous attempts but today, my niece uploaded some pictures to her myspace site using a flash drive she's used with computers at her school. Obviously the flash drive was infected because just last week I used a removal tool to rid my laptop of the annoying worm.

I got a tip from a friend to reboot my laptop and before Windows restart to hit F8 repeatedly until it takes me to this window that will give me the choice of running on safe mode with networking. From there I went to http://housecall.trendmicro.com and ran Housecall. The complete scan went on for 2 hours and when I found there were other malwares in my laptop. Housecall was successful in removing all but one, and horror of horrors, it's the stupid brontok worm that wouldn't go away! I have to rerun Housecall and it's still running as I am writing this.

My notebook is still under service warranty so now I am wondering if it will do me well to just take it to Fry's and just ask them to clean it up for me. I'm going boinkers with this already and I cannot have this interruption this close to the end of my program. I will give an update tomorrow how successful my attempts are in removing such destructive and annoying worms. I curse the people who have nothing better to do than create these things! I hope they really get worms that would burst out of their skin!!!