Hi I'm using a 3yr old cheapie Dell desktop with Norton sec suite, fully/ live updated. Yesterday it gave me notice of Trojan attack being blocked, but I'm periodically seeing wavy lines destabilising my monitor image- about a couple times an hour. Ran full system scan last night- no results. No record of attacks since in log.
Check your monitor cables. If that doesnt help, start saving money for a new monitor or repairs for the old one. Hardly a firewall-related question, though :)
Thanks for response- I asked because I wasn't seeing it previous to that attack- don't see any prob with cables. Sorry if this is a home users post to a pros group- glad for a good redirect.
Thing is, if your software informs you that some trojan has been blocked from installing itself or whatever it wanted to do, then it is blocked and everything should be fine. It would take both a serious flaw in your operating system to let a trojan access the video memory directly, and a more than usually competent trojan writer; and even if you had both of those oddities, it is highly unlikely that a trojan would reveal itself in the manner you describe. It is also highly unlikely that a bug in a trojan would result in wavy lines on your display... If you're reasonably smart and worried (the mere fact that you're asking here places you in that category), hardware errors are much more frequent than successful trojans installing themselfes without your knowledge.
I have no idea if there exists a better group for general computer security questions, maybe there are some groups with names ending in windows.security or microsoft.security?
Unfortunately not. Unfortunately, as I know the Symantec Norton stuff, I would not bet on the value of any popup from it.
Yours, VB.
Norton is on my list of products I frequently recommend customers to uninstall... Anyways, in more general terms, I still feel that if the software _recognizes_ and blocks some known trojan it most likely is not a problem.
It is far, far worse with all the trojans said software fails to recognize and block, so weirdness that could indicate a compromised system _without_ any warnings from software-that-was-supposed-to-notice is worse. IM(H)O, at least.
The very nature of anti-this and anti-that software that is running on any computer at the time of a (possible) security breach is that their warnings might be manipulated by the attacker, and there's really no good way of knowing. The february issue of CACM[1] has several interesting articles on "live analysis" of compromized systems, like "Risks of Live Digital Forensic Analysis" by Brian D. Carrier and more. Recommended read for all who can get hold of it.
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