A very Unique Virus Hits Hard and has recently arisen in the media. This virus, known as Rombertik, is, just like many other viruses, acquired by a trapped phishing message. It does the usual virus-based tasks as well, like taking passwords and other data.

Though that is where the similarities end. Rombertik, analysts describe, takes a proactive and aggressive approach to deactivating itself once it is found.

 Rombertik occasionally checks if its being checked for. And, if it is, it switches from a normal virus to a powerful Rombertik attack mode.

It starts its reign of self-destruction and terror by attempting to delete the integral system file MBR, or Master Boot Record. This file gives the computer instructions on how to boot.

Your computer is still fine at this point because the Master Boot Record is only really read when the computer boots. Yet of course Rombertik knows this, and so it attempts to restart your computer. Once your computer is restarted, with the missing MBR, the computer goes into an endless restart loop.

Getting back to work on your precious computer after this involves a reinstallation of Windows. This proccess has the posibility to lose your data.

Thought that was all the virus could do? Well, back when you were doing a virus check it was doing some more work of its own that you didn’t even know about.

Once Rombertik feels like it is being detected, and before it deals with your Master Boot Record, it sets out to write just a single byte of data to your hard drive. You may think that its just one harmless little byte, but Rombertik writes this byte to your hard drive 960 million times. This massively affects your virus checks by just purely overwhelming it.

This virus may seem pretty threatening and scary. And it very well is! You could possibly lose all of your precious pictures and files.

You can combat viruses like Rombertik by careful web browsing. Though if you are still worried, (these virus are very tricky when attempting to get you to download them so it is very understandable) come into Computer A Services. We will go in and check for anything bad as well as do a simple clean up. If you don’t have any protection or want more, we have an amazing program called WebRoot that can help qualm your worries.