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Published Jul 03, 2008 | Updated Sep 15, 2017

Virus:Win32/Virut.gen!AI

Detected by Microsoft Defender Antivirus

Aliases: Win32/Virut.9276 (CA) Virus.Win32.Virut.n (Kaspersky) W32/Virut.gen (McAfee) W32/Virut-L (Sophos) W32.Virut.B (Symantec) PE_VIRUT.GEN (Trend Micro)

Summary

Virus:Win32/Virut.gen!AI is Microsoft's generic detection for a family of polymorphic, file-appending viruses that target and infect .EXE and .SCR files. Virut variants also have a backdoor functionality by connecting to an IRC server and allowing a remote attacker to download and run files on the infected system.
Manual removal is not recommended for this threat. Use Microsoft Security Essentials or another up-to-date scanning and removal tool to detect and remove this threat and other unwanted software from your computer. For more information on Microsoft security products, see http://www.microsoft.com/protect/products/computer/default.mspx.
 
Note: The method of infection used by Win32/Virut can damage some infected files beyond repair. In these cases, in order to return a machine to its pre-infected state, it may be necessary to install a clean backup of the operating system and associated applications. 
 
Recovering from recurring infections on a network
The following additional steps may need to be taken to completely remove this threat from an infected network, and to stop infections from recurring from this and other similar types of network-spreading malware:
 
  1. Ensure that an antivirus product is installed on ALL machines connected to the network that can access or host shares  (see above for further detail).
  2. Ensure that all available network shares are scanned with an up-to-date antivirus product.
  3. Restrict permissions as appropriate for network shares on your network. For more information on simple access control, please see: [url]http://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb456977.aspx.
  4. Remove any unnecessary network shares or mapped drives.
 
Note: Additionally it may be necessary to temporarily change the permission on network shares to read-only until the disinfection process is complete.
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