Wormbot on my flashdrive?

I'm very curious about the technical responses to this since I wouldn't have thought it was a possibility.

Yes its possible and embedded in something you down loaded...

Check it out with something else, and for goodness sake get rid of that McCrappee and get something that you can keep updated.

Elaine Margarett said:

So...does this mean I need to get rid of the flashdrive?

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One step at a time. Don't do anything rash.

Elaine Margarett said:

Checking it out withsomething else...does this mean plug it in elsewhere and see if I get the message I see on my laptop?

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Use another antivirus program to identify the exact problem. There are a number of free ones (some better than others), just make sure you aren't running two at the same time.

Elaine,

What active security system do you use? Surfing the net without an active system is very dangerous...

Any active system should be able to identify and isolate the worm and then get rid of it...

Hi Elaine -- which wormbot is it? Once we know that, we can help with removal and determining how it spreads

Elaine Margarett said:

I just now put my flashdrive in my laptop to see, and the window from McAfee didn't appear. Twice, when I plugged in my drive on my laptop I got the McAfee warning box. If I remember correctly it called it a wormbot 32 and then a bunch of letters and numbers. McAfee said it eliminated it, yet I rec'd the same message the second time I plugged in, so I was concerned.

Could I be unknowingly passing it along? I have a few fulls out that I sent as attachments. Also some partials pasted into the body of an email. Is it possible my submissions would get eaten by a virus blocker? I haven't heard back from the agents I submitted to, but it is early.<g>

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Flash drives are pretty nasty as malware vectors because a lot of systems are (or at least used to be) set to just AutoPlay anything that you plug in to them - CDs, USB sticks, etc. It's possible your laptop has Autoplay disabled, so the malware isn't trying to execute, I guess. It's also possible it's a false positive, or that the AV on the laptop just isn't any good, or that the AV on the desktop isn't actually cleaning the file. It's hard to tell.

If you're infected, you could be passing it along in any number of ways. First thing would be, don't plug that flash stick into anything else until you know it's clean. I would suggest downloading Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and using that to scan both computers. I'd also bin McAfee and replace with something free and reasonably good (Microsoft Security Essentials seems pretty OK.)

See if you can get a note or a screen shot of the virus warning next time? If you hit the Print Screen button (top row of your keyboard, next to F12) that will stick a screen shot in your clipboard - you can paste it into an email or a Word doc in the usual way.