In looking over my web server logs for the past year, I found that a significant number of people were searching for information about this particular Trojan. I suspect the reason they came to my site is that I mention it in my review of the free open source antivirus program, Clamwin, which happened to detect this Trojan on one of my systems. Given that I wasn’t quite sure what it was, either, I figured I do a little research so that the next one of you to come to my site looking for the answer to this question will find it instantly. It took a bit of digging, but here’s what I can tell you.
Java.Downloader.Openstream.A is one of the aliases of a Trojan also known by the following names (or at least is related to these):
- Troj/Openstr-B
- Trojan.Java.Openstream.w
- Java.Downloader.OpenStream.A
- Trojan-Downloader.Java.OpenStream.w
- Java/OpenStream.W
- Java/OpenStream
- Trj/Downloader.DMY
- Java/Openstream.W
Doing a search on the above names can provide more information.
This virus spreads during web browsing on Windows PCs. It downloads and runs a program from a website. The program it downloads is apparently a variation on a Trojan called “Win32/IstBar”. Computer Associates also categorizes this program as Spyware, meaning it can capture personal information and transmit it to others.
My advice to you is that if your antivirus program detects this Trojan on your system, have it remove or delete the infected file. Run another virus scan of your entire computer (all drives, all files, all directories) after doing that, since these Trojans often drop another “payload” (virus, program, etc.) on your system. That other program is usually the dangerous one, and your antivirus software should pick it up.
It may also be worthwhile (for Windows users) to use a tool such as “Hijack This” to determine if there are any programs set to run at startup which should not be running. (I can’t really advise you on specifically what should and should not be running at startup on your system, as each computer can be different and not everything running at startup is bad.) Hitting “Control-Alt-Delete” to bring up the Task Manager and looking at the processes running on your system can be helpful as well. Processes that are unfamiliar could be viruses, Trojans, or spyware running on your PC. (Again, I can’t tell you which specific processes those might be, but you can usually do a search on each process name that appears in your list and often find out if it’s something safe or potentially dangerous.) In any case, I don’t recommend disabling anything in Hijack This or killing anything in the Task Manager unless you’re sure you know what it is.
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