Mebroot virus a danger to your computer?
There have been new warnings about a stealthy Windows virus that hides itself deep within Windows on your computer. Once installed it gives malicious users control of your computer and they can, for example, instal key loggers to capture your usernames and passwords, crdit card details etc., including login details for online bank accounts.
Trojan.Mebroot is a Trojan horse that overwrites the Master Boot Record of the hard disk and uses rootkit techniques to hide itself. An MBR is the first sector of a storage device such as a hard disk, and is generally used for bootstrapping the operating system after the computer’s BIOS has done its startup checks. Basically, if you can control the MBR, you can control the operating system and therefore the computer it resides on. This kind of virus has been around for a while.
The lesson as always is – keep your antivirus up to date, do not click on anything you’re not sure of, and keep your operating system patched and up to date.
Symantec page on Mebroot