Question

Windows "system idle process" virus?

Asked by: hdokes

I recently had a huge attack of virus's on every windows machine 15 in my facility.  The symptoms were mass port scans our to the internet of which I could view with tcpdump in real time.  After finally getting a handle on all machines I find my primary workstation sending bursts of info on non conventional ports to the other machines (which are locked down) on the internal network.  Further investigation shows that these bursts are tied to the "System idle process" PID.  I have never been aware of this process doing anything other than just giving visual feedback to the viewer that the CPU is not being used.  

Is anyone aware of a virus that attaches to or replaces the "System Idle Process" file and if so... can you point me to further information regarding what it is, how it may have come in, and how to insure it's total removal?

I have run both virus scans using NOC32 and SuperAntiSpyware and neither have identified any exploit.  I am using a program called Process and Port Analyzer which associates the transmitting port with the PID which is clearly showing the "System Idle Process" PID (0) as sending on these unconventional ports.  The ports are incrementing in ascending order from the source side as the previous request sits in a wait state due to no response from the destination and keys in on ports 123, 137, 138, and 445 at the destination side.  

If this is not a virus... can someone tell me if this is normal activity to go out and interrogate other machines while the CPU is idle?

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2009-02-09 at 16:37:50ID24127823
Tags

Windows system idle process

Topic

Windows Network Security

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
3

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Exploit virus
    I am receiving a virus through Outlook Express (Exploit something or other), on my home PC. I went to Symantec and downloaded their tool, and it did not find the virus on my machine. I delete these e-mails as soon as they come in. Basically, they are in the form of "L...
  2. Windows XP Home: virus: EXPLOIT-MIME.gen
    Windows XP virus: EXPLOIT-MIME.gen How do I clean my system of the virus and guard my system from being infected from opening an email (The suspect email ((which I had deleted.)) did NOT have an attachment but evidently had an executable embedded in it.) The virus seems to ...
  3. DSO Exploit
    I have read over and tried so many things to solve this but it's still there. I have run Ad-aware, SpySubtract, Noadware and Spybot and they are all clean except for Spybot that comes up with the same 5 DSO EXploit files. I delete them and they come back. I have updated my ...
  4. machine exploited
    Linux ximian evolution. I am on a AU$ 28.95 plan with a 200MB download limit which is far more than I need for the time. All of a sudden My ISP is charging AU$149 for the last month which is about AU$120.00 of excess download that I definitely did not have. With the plan I ha...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: amaru21Posted on 2009-02-09 at 16:59:38ID: 23596322

Is it possible to see the payload of the packets?  I'm not familiar with Process and Port Analyzer, but you may want to try Wireshark to see what's in the packets.

Here is some info on the ports you listed.  I'm not exactly sure why it would be scanning the other machines for these though.

System service name: Eventlog
Collapse this tableExpand this table
Application protocol      Protocol      Ports
RPC/named pipes (NP)      TCP      139
RPC/NP      TCP      445
RPC/NP      UDP      137
RPC/NP      UDP      138

Port 123 is NTP.

You may want to try some other virus/spyware scanners to make sure your computer is clean.  Here are some I use:

http://bitdefender.com
http://housecall.trendmicro.com
http://malwarebytes.com

Hard to remove viruses sometimes require to scan the the hard drive as a secondary drive on a clean machine.  I've also used http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12 with great success.

 

by: AdamsConsultingPosted on 2009-02-09 at 17:21:09ID: 23596435

When your application is not able to get the PID, it's showing 0. PID 0 doesn't actually exist, and is the PID that is shown in the PID column when looking at processes simply to show that it has no associated PID.

More commonly, people get their ports backwards. It's normal for some windows flavors to increment the source port for each new outgoing connection. This traffic looks to me like normal windows network traffic.

My recommendation is to get a better analyzer that matches up the PIDs correctly, or simply run netstat from a command prompt on your worksation.

netstat /banv

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...