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Thank you very much for that insight Stephen.  I'll take a closer look at
this system.  I was able to finally get it running at normal speeds
yesterday after uninstalling that MS835732 patch (MS04-011 bulletin), but
maybe there's still something on this system as you suggest.

I also had another Win2000 machine yesterday exhibit extreme sluggishness
and after uninstalling the above patch restored it to normal operation
too.  Now I'm wondering what patch to apply to close the hole without
screwing up the performance of these systems.  Anyone find alternative ways
to patch the exploit supposedly fixed by MS835732?
Tim

At 06:03 PM 5/6/2004, you wrote:
>Tim,
>
>Today a user brought in his personal laptop and one of our techs ran
>multiple Sasser removal tools on the laptop to no avail.  After looking
>over it some I noticed what was going on.  The laptop had been compromised
>using a newer version of Gaobot/Phatbot worm which can exploit the LSASS
>vulnerability.  The Sasser removal tools would get rid of the running
>version of the Sasser worm, but upon reboot it would be back again.  This
>is because at least two additional services had been installed, in my case
>they were
>
>c:\windows\system32\system.exe
>c:\windows\system32\ntmsdata\windows\svchost.exe (This folder held the
>original files from the attack)
>
>When the system rebooted one of these two services seem to start up Sasser
>again by pulling a copy from "c:\windows\system32\ntmsdata\windows".  The
>reason this original version wasn't getting snagged by the Sasser removal
>tool was because the permissions to the folder had been removed.
>
>After restoring the permissions for SYSTEM and Administrators, I was able
>to remove Sasser and the users A/V was able to get rid of everything
>else.  I then removed the folder that was added by the attack.  Sorry for
>the long email, but I hope it's useful.
>
>________________________________________________
>Stephen Bogdanski           Network Support, MSU-CVM
>Michigan State University  [log in to unmask]
>A227 VetMed Center         Phone:          (517) 353-5551
>East Lansing, MI 48824     Fax:              (517) 432-2937
>
>
> >>> Tim Potter <[log in to unmask]> 05/05/04 11:10AM >>>
>Has anyone had any Win 2000 machines become EXTREMELY sluggish due to one
>of these worms (taking 10 min. or so for every single process, mouse click,
>etc)?  I've run the latest/ greatest removal tools from Symantec for
>
>W32.Sasser.D and done a full scan from a good machine w/ the latest NAV
>definitions (5/4) & come up with nothing.  An ACNS help desk tech. was
>confident that the Sasser worm was causing this sort of problem on other
>PCs around campus, but I've only seen others here describe random reboots
>so far.
>
>Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated,
>Tim
>
>**********************
>Tim Potter  <><
>Information Officer
>MSU Alumni Association
>E. Lansing, MI  48824
>Toll-free: 877/ MSU-ALUM (678-2586)
>Ph: 517/432-1160
>Fax: 517/432-7769
>Stay Connected! www.msualum.com