Once your computer is infected, Trojan.Ramvicrype will search for files under My Documents, Desktop and Application DataIdentities and renames them with a .vicrypt extension. It also looks for links in the Recent folder and renames all the files in the folders that are pointed to by those links and encrypts each file’s head section. If you try to run any of those files, you’ll get a Vicrypt Error message. A worst case scenario would be a file from the Windows system folder has been recently opened, leading to the Trojan.Ramvicrype encrypting all files in the Windows System folder and critically damaging those files.

Here’s a screenshot of a computer infected by the Trojan.Ramvicrype displaying a “Vicrypt error! Please Restart Windows” message.

Previously, victims of this trojan who were looking for a fix were directed to a site that offered a paid software called AntiVicrypt. Because of this, Symantec and other security companies believe that the Trojan.Ramvicrype is some sort of ransomware and that the company offering AntiVicrypt was also responsible for spreading the trojan. Later, AntiVicrypt was offered as shareware and the trial version was limited to repairing 7 files. As of this time, AntiVicrypt is now offered FREE. I don’t know about you but based on the initial outcome/results, I won’t be trusting this company or any of its products.

To address this issue and help users, Symantec Security Response has developed a free tool to decrypt the encrypted files. The link below not only contains the link to download the free tool but it also includes step-by-step guide on how to use the Trojan.Ramvicrype Removal Tool.

Download Symantec’s Trojan.Ramvicrype Removal Tool.

[image source: Symantec]

Blogging

• Using Basic Journalism Structure to Write Great Articles
• Generic Blogging Could be the Right Choice for Newbies
• Why It’s Wrong to Pay for Blog Coverage
• How to Grow Your Google Authority

Technology

• Four Convicted in Sweden in Internet Piracy Case
• First Mac botnet detected by Symantec
• U.S. military enlists iPod Touch for battlefield
• Hulu rumored to have iPhone app in development

Gadgets

• Velocity Micro’s NoteMagix M10 netbook on sale for $379
• Viliv S5 preorder and price for U.S.
  
• T-Mobile Sidekick LX announced, hitting shelves May 13th
• JAKKS Pacific brings the arcade home… for under $50

Pinoy Blogs

• The Philippines’ Top Blogs of 2008
• Google Map View now available for Manila, Cebu, and Davao Maps
  
• Find a Way to Rig the Automated Elections, and You Win P100M!
• Symbian OS runs on Intel Atom platform

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

• WP Theme Review: Bloggingstream
• Howto: Move from Blogger to WordPress Part II
• Nikon D5000

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or want your article or find an interesting story that you want to be featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Thank you for your time and hope you guys have a great week!

Nowadays, it is essential that you have a reliable antivirus and antispam software installed in your pc. For my laptop, I have the free versions of AVG and ZoneAlarm. But for my desktop, I have 2006 Norton Internet Security Suite. Basic features include the Antivirus, Firewall, Intrusion Detection, AntiSpam, Privacy and Parental Controls. It does a good job protecting my pc from virus, spam and phishing email. It also filters unwanted sites.

However, I’ve been having problems with LiveUpdate the past few weeks. Whenever I would run LiveUpdate and finish downloading and installing all the updates, I would get this error message:

Error: “LU9001: While the virus definitions were being downloaded, an error occurred. Please try running LiveUpdate again later.”

I tried to restart my pc and do the whole process again but I still got the same error message. Next thing I did was to Google it and see if anyone has a solution to this problem. Most of the results showed people asking in forums for a solution to Error LU9001. One solution provided by one person was to uninstall Norton and manually delete folders and anything related to Norton from the registry. I didn’t want to do this. Another solution was to use Symantec’s AutoFix Tool (which you have to use with Internet Explorer. It doesn’t work with Firefox or Opera.). I tried it and followed instructions and went thru the whole process, but that also didn’t solve the problem.

I was getting annoyed coz my virus definitions weren’t updated and that means Norton was as good as nothing, useless! So the next thing I tried was to go to Symantec.com and did a search for “LU9001″. Guess what? They do have a solution to it. Just follow these steps. (Again, requires you to do it using Internet Explorer)

STEP 1
Print this page
We suggest that you print this page before you start. PRINT
STEP 2
Remove damaged files
Note You are about to run a tool that only works in Internet Explorer (IE). If you have this page open in any other Web browser, please start IE and open this page in it.

1. Click the button to start the file removal tool: RUN IT NOW
When you are asked if you want to run the software, be sure to click Run.

2. After the removal tool runs, restart your computer and run LiveUpdate.
If you still see the LU9001 error, you can either wait a day or two and run LiveUpdate again, or go on to STEP 3 to get virus definitions now.

STEP 3
Get virus definitions
1. Click the button to start a program that downloads virus definitions. RUN IT NOW

It can take 15 minutes or longer to install the definitions.
When you are asked if you want to run the software, click Run.
If you see a yellow bar at the top of the window with a message about ActiveX controls, click the bar and then click Install ActiveX control. When a small box appears, click Install

2. Wait at least 24 hours, and then run LiveUpdate again.

I didn’t have to wait 24 hours, I only had to go until #1 of Step #3. I run the script to download the latest virus definitions, finished the download and restarted my pc. Then when I checked my virus definitions, it was already up-to-date!

I am sharing this info so I could help other people who might also be experiencing the same problem with Error LU9001. Please let me know or leave a comment here if this article helped you in fixing this problem. Thank you.

Here are some of the biggest pc myths that most people believe to be true. These myths, we usually hear them from family and friends, from co-workers and sometimes even from people who we consider to be very literate when it comes to technology and computers. For me, there are a couple of myths that I thought was true before reading this article.

by Greg Keizer

Magnets zap your data.
For venerable floppies, this statement holds true. We placed a 99-cent magnet on a 3.5-inch floppy for a few seconds. The magnet stuck to the disk and ruined its data.

Fortunately, most modern storage devices, such as SD and CompactFlash memory cards, are immune to magnetic fields. “There’s nothing magnetic in flash memory, so [a magnet] won’t do anything,” says Bill Frank, executive director of the CompactFlash Association. “A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells,” says Frank.

The same goes for hard drives. The only magnets powerful enough to scrub data from a drive platter are laboratory degaussers or those used by government agencies to wipe bits off media. “In the real world, people are not losing data from magnets,” says Bill Rudock, a tech-support engineer with hard-drive maker Seagate. “In every disk,” notes Rudock, “there’s one heck of a magnet that swings the head.”

Want to erase data from a hard drive you plan to toss? Don’t bother with a magnet. Overwrite the data that is stored on the media instead. For flash, fill up the drive with anything, like pictures of your beloved dachshund. Unlike with magnetic media, from which experts can usually recover at least some overwritten data, once new data is written to flash media, the old data is gone forever.

Cookies track everything you do on the Internet.
When cookies first appeared, some Web users got bent out of shape because they thought cookies would track their every move online. Wrong.

Sure, cookies can perform limited tracking when you’re browsing Web pages. And some persistent cookies can trace your movements from site to site. For instance, cookies from DoubleClick, a company that feeds targeted Web ads to users, track your surfing to any DoubleClick-enabled site to make sure that you don’t see the same advertisement over and over.

But most cookies are far less intrusive. A cookie used by Amazon.com, for example, to personalize the Web site for you doesn’t pay any attention to what you do when you head to another shopping site such as Barnes and Noble.

If you’re worried about cookies, turn them off in your browser (although doing so will render many sites virtually unsurfable). In IE, choose Tools, Internet Options, click the Privacy tab, and click Advanced to override automatic cookie handling.

Opting out of spam gets you even more spam.
You’ve heard the advice. Don’t reply to spam. If you do, you’ll get even more because you’ve just told the spammer that your e-mail address is legit.

“No one has done a complete test of this because it’s difficult, if not impossible, to prove beyond a doubt,” says Ari Schwartz, associate director for the Center for Democracy & Technology. With spam accounting for as much as 83 percent of all Internet-delivered messages in the United States, he says, “if you do opt out and get more spam, how will you know you wouldn’t have received it anyway?”

Sometimes opting out does work. Last year CDT researched spam sources by creating e-mail accounts, seeding them through various venues, noting the amount of spam that each account received, and opting out. Many companies complied with the opt-out requests within two weeks.

“Knowing who to opt out from is key,” says Schwartz. “Opting out of legitimate companies drops you off their lists, but when you do that with “real” spammers, the results are unclear.”

Regardless of whether you opt out, spammers have various tools to grab addresses. You can’t completely protect your inbox, but you can take defensive measures, such as keeping your e-mail address off public sites, says Schwartz.

Hackers can destroy data on your computer’s hard drive.
“The MyDoom.f worm took a step back into an era where viruses actually attacked data,” says Bryson Gordon, a senior manager with McAfee Security. Although viruses and worms that attack files are relatively uncommon, they are nightmare number one for anyone connected to the Internet.

Among other nefarious activities, MyDoom.f sniffed around on infected PCs looking for Word, Excel, and graphics files and then randomly deleted some of what it found. Of the people whose PCs got the worm, 40 percent lost Word files and 60 percent lost Excel files.

Today’s hackers want to hijack systems, not destroy them. Rather than wipe out data, worms and viruses want intact PCs to send spam or to attack Web sites. “Just like a biological virus, if a computer virus kills the host before it propagates, it can’t propagate,” says Allen Householder, an Internet security analyst with the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team, which is now part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Turning off your PC daily to save power shortens its life.
Here’s a topic that provokes debate. One side argues that turning the PC on and off stresses components. The other side says it’s a good thing; even the best programs and the OS can get cranky without occasional shutdowns.

There’s no definitive answer. Most authorities, however, lean toward the idea that shutting off does more good than harm — plus it saves power. Kevin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, supports that side of the debate. “Processors typically have a ten-year life span,” he says, so a PC will be dead weight before switching it on and off could affect the CPU.

Tip: If you’re using Windows XP, right-click the desktop, choose New, Shortcut, type shutdown -s -t 00, click Next, give the shortcut a name (for example, Shutdown), and click Finish. Next time you need to shut down, click the shortcut icon.

The government reads everyone’s e-mail.
Okay, so we thought this myth was spawned by the same conspiracy theorists who gave us the Gunman on the Grassy Knoll, the Illuminati, and Area 51. After all, how much time does the government really have on its hands?

“It’s obviously a myth,” says Marc Rotenberg, Georgetown University law professor and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. If a privacy watchdog doesn’t buy the myth, no one should, right? Wrong.

“The government may not be reading everyone’s e-mail now,” he adds, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not interested in doing that in the future. In a few years, the government might be reading everyone’s e-mail.” Fortunately, we Americans have the Fourth Amendment. Government agencies “the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA“ can’t read your e-mail without probable cause, except under special circumstances related to espionage.

The Patriot Act allows the government to read all e-mail of a suspect and of all people who communicate with that suspect. But even privacy watchdogs like Rotenberg don’t claim that everyone’s e-mail gets the once-over yet.

In the end, conspiracy junkies may feel vindicated. “There are programs that can sort through mass amounts of e-mail, looking for suspicious keywords,” says Ari Schwartz of the CDT. He says because intelligence agencies haven’t been open about whether they are using such software, you can’t rule out the possibility that the government is checking up on you.

If you don’t periodically run your laptop batteries down to zero, you’ll lose battery life.
This belief stems from a syndrome that plagued old-fashioned laptop batteries — the bulky nickel cadmium variety. With those batteries, performance degraded if the battery wasn’t periodically discharged fully. (If you use a NiCd-powered laptop, discharge the battery every three months.)

Newer laptops use lithium ion batteries that have no memory, says Isidor Buchmann, the founder of Cadex, a Canadian manufacturer of battery chargers and analyzers. They don’t need to be discharged to maintain their life, he says. Lithium ion batteries prefer a partial rather than a full discharge. Nonetheless, every 30 charges or so, you should run them down to zero. This measure isn’t to preserve the battery but to recalibrate the fuel gauge — the indicator on the laptop screen that shows how much battery juice and time remain.

Using a cell phone on a plane interferes with the navigation and communications systems of the aircraft.
“I’ve never experienced a navigational problem that could be traced to a cell phone,” says one veteran pilot who didn’t want his identity revealed. “From everything I’ve read, cell phones and most avionics shouldn’t conflict.”

So why do flight attendants make you put away your gear before takeoffs and landings? “That’s more for making sure [we] have people’s attention and for [individual] safety,” he says. “If I have to hit the brakes and abort a takeoff, I don’t want a laptop flying across the cabin.”

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates cell phone use in a plane, has a different view: “The concern is that cell phones would conflict with onboard avionics,” says Paul Takemoto, the FAA’s electronics guru.

Is there scientific proof that cell phones can make planes go haywire? Some. In 2003 the Civil Aviation Authority (the FAA of the United Kingdom) ran tests using simulated cell phone signals in a chamber (not in an actual aircraft) and found problems. In some cases, the compass froze, some instruments displayed errors, and audio communications were difficult to hear due to interference.

Until additional tests prove otherwise, Takemoto says, the FAA prefers to err on the side of caution.

If you don’t “stop” a USB device before unplugging it from a PC, you’ll screw things up.
When you unplug a USB device without first “stopping” it in Windows (accomplished by clicking the Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar), your PC makes a bing-bong sound and usually pops up a message scolding you for the move or warning that what you just did can delete data saved on USB storage devices or damage hardware.

We’re cautious about unplugging a device while it’s still writing data (an action USB flash-drive makers always warn against) because doing so can cause major damage. Case in point: One PC World editor unplugged an external USB hard drive that was doing some activity in the background; he lost all his data and damaged the drive itself.

If you wait until the device stops writing data and then pull the drive out, you’re unlikely to experience serious problems. Although Windows takes you to task for such rashness, even Microsoft downplays the peril. The company told us that any damage will depend on the USB device, but in general [unplugging a USB peripheral] shouldn’t affect the system.”

To see if the task has negative effects, we unplugged and plugged a bunch of USB devices, including a camera, a printer, a USB flash drive, and a scanner, without first “stopping” them in Windows. The only problem was Windows’ failure to recognize our USB flash drive after we had unplugged it and then immediately plugged it in again. If that happens to you, wait a few seconds between unplugging and plugging. If that doesn’t work, reboot Windows. And if that doesn’t work, run the Add Hardware wizard from the Control Panel to make Windows “see” the USB device.

Terrible things happen if you turn off your PC without shutting down Windows.
Don’t touch that switch! According to Microsoft, if you turn off your PC without first shutting down Windows, your hard drive could become more fragmented, files could become corrupted, and you could lose data.

Maybe Microsoft’s warning holds some water, but we wouldn’t worry about straining the system or harming Windows. We ran 30 iterations of an informal test, turning off a pair of systems running Windows XP without first shutting down Windows. Each time we left documents open in Word, Outlook, and Quicken. And we left our Internet connection up and running.

After we turned each PC back on, we ran Symantec’s Norton Disk Doctor and the Windows disk checker to see if the hard drive had suffered any ill effects. We reopened the applications that we had left running and reconnected to the Internet.

Problems? Disk Doctor found no disk errors, and our files were intact at least up to the last time they were saved, but not always to the point of the last edit made. Outlook recovered without a glitch, and so did Quicken. (We didn’t check disk fragmentation because some hard-drive experts told us that defragging today’s faster, bigger drives has little to no effect on performance.)

If you’re uneasy about just switching off the PC, change the Power Options settings. From the Control Panel, open Power Options, click the Advanced tab, and under “Power buttons” select Hibernate. Now whenever you push the power button, Windows will save itself in its current state. Turn the computer on later, and Windows will pop up, just as you left it, in a lot less time than the system would take to boot.

You can read the full article here.