New From Nokia- N82

Ok, I’ll take a break from posting about worms this time and check what’s the latest from the mobile phone world. Nokia just this month, released the N82 high-end quad-band GSM cameraphone, It boast a 5-megapixel resolution, auto-focus camera and comes with true Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss lens. It features WiFi, GPS, microSD slot for memory and runs Symbian 9.2 S60.

The display dimension is 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches with 16M colors. Phonebook, practically unlimited entries ( Wow! Perhaps you can write the names of all 6 Billion people in the world). It also comes with a 2 GB microSD , hot swappable card.

Data connection? Almost through anything! From USB, Bluetooth 3G, Wi-Fi and EDGE. It also has , GPRS. Also comes with aGPS( Global Positioning System ) so you’ll never get lost wherever you are… unless you lost your phone. (Bummer!).

The battery… up to 225 Hours standby time and up to 4 hours and 2o mins Talk time.

Other features

- Built-in GPS receiver
- A-GPS function
- Motion sensor (with UI auto-rotate) ---()
- Installed Maps application covering over 100 countries
- Java MIDP 2.0
- MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA player
- Video player
- 3.5 mm audio output jack
- TV out
- Stereo FM Radio
- Organizer
- Office document viewer
- T9
- Push to talk
- Voice dial/memo
- Built-in handsfree

The price. Around P640.00.

Ooops! Wrong monetary unit. Its $640.00.

Ok. Next time I’ll post something much more affordable. :D

VBS Worm Remover

If your computer or storage device(s) is infected by one or more of these worms, imgkulot, peanuts, bungoton, kulitot and pooh. I have edited panot's original imgkulot remover to include the bungoton, kulitot and pooh vbs worm

here's the link: vbswormremover


Good luck.

How to remove Imgkulot and How to Avoid infecting your Harddrive and Other Storage Devices (Part 2)

Preventing imgkulot from Spreading / How to avoid infecting your storage device

Prevention is still the best way to stop this virus. Since there are already variants (variations) of this virus- I encountered so far 'kulitot' and 'bungoton' - the remover I mentioned above will not work on these two variants, however it can remove another variant known as 'Peanuts'.

Also, bear in mind that the 'Autorun.inf' file is a normal Windows instruction file that once you double click on any drive with 'Autorun.inf', it will automatically run or execute whatever commands or script written there. This feature has been used primarily by installer CDs that runs the installation program once you enter or double click on a CD drive. However, since it works as well on a fixed drive and any other storage device such as your flash disk or memory cards, this feature has been exploited by virus makers, such as 'imgkulot' , RavMon and among others. And by simply double clicking your storage device, you have infected the PC that you are using. And once you insert a clean flash disk or other removable storage device, it becomes infected as well. And once that infected storage device is inserted into another PC, it could be infected as well.

Now, before you decide to reformat your PC, and all of your removable drives, digital cam-memory cards and even your cell phone... DON'T! Reformatting will only wipe out your data, including the precious pix of the first born of your pet tarantula! First, if your PC or flash drive is infected by imgkulot, and if you haven't done it yet, read the first part of this blog. Then read along on how to avoid getting infected

To Double Click or Not to Double Click. It is a common practice that we double click on a drive that we want to access. In fact double clicking has already become a habit. (Am I right? or Am I right?) But in this days that such a common action has been exploited already, I think it's high time to break that habit.

When you right click a drive , a pop menu will come out. The figure below is the pop-up menu of a drive that has no Autorun.Inf.

Figure 1. Pop-up Menu of a clean drive.

And when you right click an infected storage device, the pop-up menu would look like this.

Figure 2. Infected drive

If you see the figure above (Figure 2.), refer to the first part of this article and remove the virus. However, if you really need to open the drive for some reasons, you can still open your drive.

WARNING! If you are planning to open your flash drive or other memory device in this computer, DON'T! Remove the virus first! If this is not your computer, tell the owner. If you're in an Internet cafe, tell the person in charge that their pc is infected. If you are willing to take the risk though, read on.

To access your infected drive or storage device without running the autorun.inf , Click the Folders option from the windows toolbar. (see Figure 3). A sidebar will then appear similar to Figure 4. From that sidebar, you can now safely access your drive.

Figure 3. Using the Folder Side Bar

Figure 4.

PRECAUTIONS:

1) When inserting a storage device into your computer. Specially if its not yours, Do not double click to access it. Right click on it!
2) BEFORE inserting your own storage device to another computer, specially in an Internet Cafe, Right Click first in any of the Harddrives, and see if it is clean (See Figure 1). If not, tell the owner that his/her pc is infected. If it cannot be cleaned immediately, download the imgkulot remover and clean it first.

-o0O0o-

How to remove Imgkulot and How to Avoid infecting your Harddrive and Other Storage Devices

Disclaimer: The following article is based on my personal experience and from what I've read from the net. Link(s) are made to the source of file(s) and or information, to give credit to them. The procedure given below worked for me and other computers and storage devices that I has been infected by imgkulot alone. I could not give a 100% guarantee if the process below will work for you especially if you have other viruses in your PCs. However you can contact me anytime if you encounter some problems in following the procedures below. PAY ATTENTION to the WARNING!

Probably some of you already have encountered this annoying virus named imgkulot that prevents you from opening your harddrives and /or other storage devices( This includes Flash drives, memory cards of Cell Phones, Digital Cams, Mp3/Mp4 players) . And when you right click on one of your drives you'll get something like this (see image)

Now before you call your computer technician to deal with this problem, read on and you will be able to solve this problem yourself. And even if you call a technician and if he/she says you need to reformat your drive, (believe me I have encountered some technicians who would readily reformat a harddrive or a flash disk for a simple problem like this — I'll post another entry about these kind of "technicians"), throw them out of your door as soon as they say the word reformat! You DON'T NEED TO REFORMAT ANYTHING!.

Understanding What imgkulot does.

ImgKulot is simply annoying which copies itself to any storage devices available, including your hard drives, flash drives, even the memory cards of your cellphones, digital cams, and mp3/mp4 players.

Specifically, imgkulot copies and hides the following files:

• Autorun.inf - this is not a virus in itself. Generally its an instruction file which, as its name implies, runs automatically when a drive is opened. However, this is the part that launches the actual virus.
• imgkulot.vbs- a VB (Visual Basic)Script which is the actual malware (malicious software)/virus.
• imgkulot.reg - a part of the malware which is saved in the windows registry.

Double clicking on the infected drive(s), like we usually do, would launch the virus and when you insert another removable drive (flash disk or even the memory card(s) of your cellphones and digital cameras), the virus would copy the files listed above to the uninfected drive. Right Clicking the drive and clicking Open would do the same (see image above).

Anti-Virus Programs.

As for the anti-virus programs, I'm using AVG which removes the files from the memory and from the storage devices, but not all of them sad to say. AVG leaves the imgkulot.reg and the Autorun.inf on the drives. As a result when you double click the infected drive, you'll get an error message that says, "imgkulot.vbs not found", (or something similar) and makes your drive inaccessible still. I'm not sure how other commercial anti-virus programs deals with imgkulot.

Removing imgkulot

So far downloading and running this imgkulot remover is the easiest and much safest. I found this file in Titu's Site when I was looking for such a remover. This is a simple batch file which removes the virus from the memory and from the infected drives and its very easy to use

• Unzip the file to your hard drive
• Double click the file.
  -it will first attempt to kill the wscript.exe from the process
  -then it will ask for the letter of the drive to be cleaned- e.g. D:
  
• Repeat the process until all drives are clean.

However, I don't see a line that cleans the registry. Although This is good enough to clean the infected storage. This and another anti-virus program like AVG can completely remove the imgkulot virus from your system.

Before I found this I made a batch file which I copy on each infected drive and run. And manually remove the imgkulot.reg from the registry and kill the wscript.exe from the process manually. Here's what I did.

• First of all kill the process from the memory.
  1.Bring up the Task Manager by pressing 'Control-Alt-Delete (Ctr-Alt-Del)' ,
  2.Click on the Processes tab.
  3. Look for Wscript.exe from the list and select it
  4. Press End Process
  This will prevent the virus from writing itself on the drive again after you delete it (next steps)
• Open the Infected Drive
  - If you right click your drive and see something like the figure above,
  the best and safest way to access it, is: From the start menu click Run…:
  On the text box type the infected drive letter - e.g C: and press the Enter key

  If you could not bring up the task bar and you get a 'Task Manager has been disabled by your Administrator' message, you probably have another virus in your system that prevents this. Email me or post a message here if you do have this problem
  

• View the hidden Files
  From the main menu select Folder Options
  

  - Then Click the View Tab.
  - Then Select Show hidden files and folders
  - Then uncheck Hide protected operating system files

  
  
  -This should show you the hidden and system files.

• WARNING! Unless you know what you are doing, DO NOT DELETE OTHER FILES aside from the ones listed here
• Delete the Autorun.inf and the three files with imgkulot names.
  -imgkulot.vbs
  -imgkulot.bat
  -imgkulot.reg
  (Other known variants: bungoton.vbs,bunguton,bat, bunguton.reg and kulitot.vbs, kulitot.bat, kulitot.reg)
• For safety reasons, go to Folder options again and View Tab and select Do not Show hidden files and folders
  and Check Hide protected operating system files

Next How to Prevent Imgkulot from spreading.

Tech Blog for the Non Technical People

Welcome to Tek Bytes!

(Originally I planned to do this on the other blog server I use (click here), however it would seem that blogspot is the right spot for this blog which allows me put some features that I need for my intent and purposes. For now though I'm still experimenting with both servers, so the two will mirror all my post until I could decide.)

This blog is all about the technologies that is affects our everyday lives.

Whoa! that line just scared the wits out of me! Let's make this clear I might not be able to include here the technology behind the Voyager I, which I know it's powered by four radioisotope thermoelectric generators, (heck I don't even know what radioisotope exactly mean). No! I'm not writing an encyclopedia or something here. What will be included here are information about technologies that affects and/or being used by the common people, like personal computers, cell phones, palm tops, other stuff, with the non-technical readers in mind.

To make this welcome post short, some of the information that will be posted here in the near future will be about the following.

• Personal Computers (Hardware and Software)
  - Tips: from buying a PC, proper handling/using, Software application,
  - What's the latest?(including current pricing
  - Viruses- how to prevent/minimize damage
  - Gamings (perhaps )
• Cell phones (what's the latest features and other stuff)
• The Internet
  - Tips: Searching, surfing and others

These are some of the items that will be included in this stuff. But these stuff will be specifically for those who are not really technically inclined readers and are just searching for tips or answers for some questions they have about the computers and other hi-tech stuff they are using, like finding the "ANY KEY" on the keyboard. *grin*.

For you IT gurus out there who wants to share their knowledge though, your contributions will be highly appreciated and acknowledgment will be rightfully given for your contribution(s). just your tips/articles to tekbytes5800@yahoo.com.ph.