How would I know if I had a virus?

My friends and I were scouring the internet for an infamous fetish video so that we could shock ourselves. Silly, I know. Anyway, I happened on a site were I thought I found it and when I clicked on the video link a window popped up saying something about a trojan virus. So naturally, I backed out of that website as fast as possible.

Well this morning my roomate is using the computer and she tells me that her browsing windows close and that a window pops up saying that we need to run XP virus scanner immediately. Well I don't even have that program....

What is going on?

When I run my virus scanner program (the only one I have that I found through the add/remove program) it doesn't seem to detect anything.

I've heard that ubuntu is really hard to infect with a virus but I'm really worried. I'm not the most computer saavy, and I can't afford to have my computer destroyed.

Help?

Ondine

endtheembargo said: My friends and I were scouring the internet for an infamous fetish video so that we could shock ourselves. Silly, I know. Anyway, I happened on a site were I thought I found it and when I clicked on the video link a window popped up saying something about a trojan virus. So naturally, I backed out of that website as fast as possible.

Well this morning my roomate is using the computer and she tells me that her browsing windows close and that a window pops up saying that we need to run XP virus scanner immediately. Well I don't even have that program....

What is going on?

When I run my virus scanner program (the only one I have that I found through the add/remove program) it doesn't seem to detect anything.

I've heard that ubuntu is really hard to infect with a virus but I'm really worried. I'm not the most computer saavy, and I can't afford to have my computer destroyed.

Help?

Ondine windows viruses can't affect linux. This is a fact.

you just had a malware pop-up..harmless.. they are trying to sell you a scan program.. in your browser you should be able to block that site

plz don't worry.

as far as i know.......none can effect ubuntu (virus, trojan, any-wares) just ignore that alert windows......

Installing an XP virus wont do anything to your linux machine, it has to be a special virus written for linux. Just browing a website, or even just downloading a file, wont be enough to infect your comp. You have to take the extra step of installing it.

So dont install linux programs on your computer unless you know what they are and you will never get a virus.

thanks everyone! I feel much better!

Yea - I was trying to determine what a virus did once at my job - guy was infected. I found the file he clicked on and run it on my ubuntu machine using WINE. I was able to see exactly what it was trying to do, and ubuntu was not affected in anyway as it wouldn't allow the virus to do anything.

Ubuntu Rocks!! :guitar:

Linux security is different then windows security.

See this thread for info : [[color=black]Ubuntu Security[/color]](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=510812)

Also, for your interest :

At this time it is possible to run windows viruses with wine. They do not run well yet (and you usually need to modify wine to allow them to run at all).

http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1430222&from=rss

the same thing happened to me, except in mine a site said malaware and it was selling some kind of program to get rid of malaware and it was warning me that I had this spy thing on my system and directing me to a site to do a check and download program to remove it.

Then I had the same as the first message on this thread - really slow system, windows freezing, and a CPU at 100% but when I would go to System Monitor it didn't show any process taking up that much memory. I did a virus scan (with ClamTk - which is in the utilities universe repository) and came up with the following virus - Trojan.Peed-185 virus, in a file of this name - 03852FA8d01. I then quarantined it and presto system started to go to normal speed and CPU went down to 4% or something (after virus check of course).

I then googled it because I didn't want to remove it without knowing what it would do when I removed it. And I came up with 3 pages, one of them being an Apple Mac forum and there was a posting that was timed today 2.38pm (australia time I think)

Anyway, I posted there just in case also even though I don't have a Mac.

So maybe it didn't kill my drive or whatever (which is GREAT!! :))but it was doing something I think, because my system went back to normal immediately after I quarantined it.

I finally deleted it. Anyway, hope this helps someone.

I don't know If I'm pissing towards the wind on this one but could it be that a cookie in firefox is directing you to such popups? I know it sounds silly but once in a while, I would get a pop up and then i delete all cookies and clear history with cash and they are gone. Could be my imagination!

thanks for putting the malware up in the mac forum also. as i just got my selve a mac today i think thats very nice to do this.

i did not even know that there is any malware for the macware. well. we all liven and learn. thanks .

Question - How can you tell your computer is infected with a virus? Answer - If the bottom left corner of your screen says "START"

I had to make the joke, but seriously that was just one of those pop-up ads that try to scare web users into buying or using some less than honest companies software by saying your computer is infected without having scanned or detected anything. I actually saw where one company defended this tactic by saying that since 80% (or some silly high percent) of machines have some sort of malware or tracking cookies that they weren't deceiving people, man it's sad what some people will do to try and make a buck off of scaring people.