SQUISH OSAMA - great new animated internet game: OSAMARAMA

passiton.com ^ | 3/19/02 | Pass-it-on

[DJ88]

I know. I'm hoping they'll change it back. People are very frustrated and they're losing a lot of good Freepers.

[ppaul]

Did your anti-virus software alert on it (mine didn't)? What's the name of the virus?

Yeah.
I have updated Norton AntiVirus and it did not flag this.
Please let us know what "virus" you are referring to.

[aShepard]

Mine didn't react either. I sent it to a co-worker through our intranet, passing through a firewall, and her machine picked up a virus. Checked my machine, and it's not infected. So what's up??????????????????

[ppaul]

So there's no virus - but you posted a false alert anyway?
What's the deal?

[aShepard]

I work at a web development/site hosting company that has an extensive dual firewall and about ten million of equipment to protect. The game came to me through the firewall, with no virus warning, I sent it on via e-mail to a co-worker, that went outside the firewall, and came back in to her. Her machine says the file is infected, but no virus name. She refuses to open it out of fear.

So, what's up, is that something appears to be attached to the file that is undetected by my Norton, but is picked up by her Norton. I posted the warning as an alert, as I don't know what's up with the game.

[LibWhacker]

Personally, I've never heard of Macromedia Flash files being infected by viruses. But a search of google shows that Flash viruses are the latest development in that form of vandalism.

So . . . it's possible that this is one of the first such viruses to be released in the wild, and our up-to-date virus protection software just isn't capable of detecting it. But it'd be extraordinarily bad luck if that's the case.

I posted the question on a couple of the virus newsgroups. We'll see if any of those propeller heads over there detect anything . . . And I'll report back.

[LibWhacker]

. . . undetected by my Norton, but is picked up by her Norton . . .

Now that is strange! I've also got Norton with the latest virus defs, and nothing came up when I ran the file.

[who knows what evil?]

I'm not much for video games, but it felt pretty good sending twenty of those heathens to "Allah" on the first try.

[LibWhacker]

As I suspected, at least one of the virus wonks on usenet is interested in this report. I'm guessing, but he sounds like an honest-to-goodness anti-virus software developer to me because the word "anti-virus" is in his email address, and now I feel obliged to help answer his questions. So please help me out, okay, Shep? I think he's really, really interested because this may be a first. He would like to know:

1) Exactly which file is infected? Is it the "graphic1.swf" file?
2) Which version of Norton does your co-worker have and what update level is it at?
3) Precisely what did Norton report when she attempted to run the file?

Maybe you could contact this lady in person?

This usenet guy, Nick FitzGerald, had this to say:

If [her] AV s/w simply warned that the SWF includes "possibly dangerous ActionScript commands" then I'd say its SWF heuristics are probably a tad too sensitive. (I really would like to know what AV sw and what update level its at.)

I told him that Norton (at least your version and mine) does not sound an alarm on this .swf file and he's already run a check of it with F-Prot, EZ-AV, VirusScan, and AVP/KAV!!! (None of which alerted.) Thx.

[gnarledmaw]

"SWF heuristics are probably a tad too sensitive"

This was my first thought, "Nick" must also be a professional geek.