How do I get ruid of Bloodhound.exploit.106?

May 21, 2007 6:25 AM

My laptop has been infected something called Bloodhound.Exploit.106 which is darn hard to get rid of... Help! Please!

My Toshiba laptop seems to have a virus and is acting very slow and buggy – the dual processors are blowing lots of hot air, the CPU is high, and all programs are very sluggish on a usually zippy machine.

Norton keeps finding something called Bloodhound.Exploit.106 and telling me it has been fixed, and soon enough it says I’m infected and then claims to have fixed it. About once an hour. Googling doesn’t turn much up, except that it is some kind of “heuristic virus…” and no, I have no idea what that means.

I’ve been trying to lasso the little feller using on-line scans, such as Trend Anti-Virus or Kaspersky, but it seems to have dumped lots of temp files into my machine, slowing down the scans to day long procedures: I cleaned 39,0000 files from my Windows Temp folder this morning in safe mode… they are named things like {FFB344A8-9E8A-4435-B899C-9F1B5A667A12} and are listed as 388KB each, however when I click on one of these files properties it says 0 bytes in size. Curious, no? And they can only be routed in safe mode. I’ve had Kaspersky running for two hours – it is only reading 12% scanned. Something strange is afoot, I think.

Can anybody help me clean this out of my machine?

posted by zaelic to computers & internet (11 comments total)

As far as I know, this isn't a virus that replicates itself. If you clean you internet temp files, it's gone.

However, Norton is notorious for misdiagnosing this infection. If Norton is the only one "catching" this, then adjust Norton in the System/Auto-Protect settings. There's a page devoted to Bloodhound.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:37 AM on May 21, 2007

Symantec, and other sites, claim that "Bloodhound.Exploit.106 is a heuristic detection for an Unspecified Vulnerability in Microsoft Word (as described in Microsoft Security Advisory 929433)."

Try running Windows Updates and make sure your MS Office has all it's current updates. You may not actually have this virus.
posted by dnthomps at 6:46 AM on May 21, 2007

I've been cleaning my internet temp folders regularly, but Norton still finds bloodhound.exploit.106 regularly. And the slowness and slew of odd temp files in C\Windows\Temp keeps growing by the minute - about one every two minutes. I can only delete them in safe mode.
posted by zaelic at 6:55 AM on May 21, 2007

I'm sorry to hear about your infection. What a nightmare.

Norton's antivirus program is not very good, although I'm a bit surprised to hear of this particular problem. Have you tried AVG Free as an alternate virus scanner / cleaner? It's very good.
posted by Nelson at 6:56 AM on May 21, 2007

Slightly off topic: I switched back to the free version of AVG one month into a 12-month paid subscription to Norton
posted by winston at 7:47 AM on May 21, 2007

I recently had a browser hijack. F-Secure could not identify it, Suerantispyware could identify it but not remove it, AVG could identify it but not remove it. Panda Active Scan detected it and several other malware items. The free scan identifies and reports, but I took a shot and paid $16.95 CAD for 6 months service and it did the job.
posted by Neiltupper at 9:46 AM on May 21, 2007

The problem with onlkine scans has been that whatever infected my computer seems to have generated loads of temp or other files, and the scans get bogged down analysing these and show me times like "will finish in 21 hours..." I'm now running norton on it in safe mode. Trend got stopped, Kaspersky ran for six hours and completed 20% of the scan... maybe I'll try letting Panda run overnight...
posted by zaelic at 9:56 AM on May 21, 2007

I couldn't be happier with Kaspersky. I installed it about 6 months ago and will never go back to Norton. You can download a free 30 day trial that should clean this up.

Never heard if them? Me neither until I came across this article.

Hope this helps.
posted by pleuroma at 2:27 PM on May 21, 2007

Sorry... the above is my first post to MF. THIS is the link.
posted by pleuroma at 2:29 PM on May 21, 2007

By "heuristic", your scanner means that it is looking for patterns or activities that are virus like, but have not necessarily been identified as a real virus - things like unexpected changes in file sizes, etc. The disadvantage of a heuristic scan is that it will often result in quite a large number of false alarms or flags.

Still, it seems like something is definitely going on.

I would start by making sure that you are fully updated, both Word and IE (even if you are running a different browser normally).

Then try running a cleaner first to get rid of the temp files that are slowing down your online scans. I recommend CCleaner, which tends to do a great job of flushing unwanted/unneeded files from your computer. Let it run first, then try the online scans. If you haven't already, I would also recommend switching from Norton. Not only is it slipping in the ratings for detecting viruses, but it's also a HUGE resource hog. Personally, I use AVG, but Panda is good too.

If you haven't done a thorough scan for malware yet, do that as well. I usually run three to cover myself thoroughly - AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Spyware Doctor.
If you want to try having a shell program run your spyware for you, I've had good experience with Hitman Pro.
posted by gemmy at 7:47 PM on May 21, 2007

A shell program to run your anti-spyware for you, obviously...
posted by gemmy at 7:49 PM on May 21, 2007