Virus:W32/Ramnit.N is distributed in infected EXE, DLL and HTML files; it can also be distributed via removable drives.
Based on the settings of your F-Secure security product, it will either move the file to the quarantine where it cannot spread or cause harm, or remove it.
A False Positive is when a file is incorrectly detected as harmful, usually because its code or behavior resembles known harmful programs. A False Positive will usually be fixed in a subsequent database update without any action needed on your part. If you wish, you may also:
Check for the latest database updates
First check if your F-Secure security program is using the latest updates, then try scanning the file again.
Submit a sample
After checking, if you still believe the file is incorrectly detected, you can submit a sample of it for re-analysis.
Note: If the file was moved to quarantine, you need to collect the file from quarantine before you can submit it.
Exclude a file from further scanning
If you are certain that the file is safe and want to continue using it, you can exclude it from further scanning by the F-Secure security product.
Note: You need administrative rights to change the settings.
Virus:W32/Ramnit.N is distributed in infected EXE, DLL and HTML files; it can also be distributed via removable drives.
Once active, the virus infects EXE, DLL and HTML files found on the computer. It will also drop a malicious file that attempts to connect to and download other files from a remote server.
When a Ramnit.N-infected file is first executed, it will drop a copy of itself to the following location:
It then create the following mutex, which is used to ensure only a single instance of the virus copy is running on the machine at any time:
In order to automatically execute itself if the system is rebooted, the virus also creates the following registry launchpoint:
Before proceeding to infect other files on the machine, the malware first determines whether a previous instance of its process is already running by checking for its unique mutex in this format:
If the mutex is not present, the virus will spawn a new process (a copy of itself) in the following folder:
The dropped process will then spawn other hidden processes (either the default web browser process or svchost.exe). The infection routine is injected into these new processes via a hook on Windows Native System Services, for example: ntdll.ZwWriteVirtualMemory.
Once the injection is done, the process from %programfiles\microsoft\[infector].exe terminates, leaving the subsequent infection routine running in the background.
Ramnit.N modifies EXE, DLL and HTML files by appending its own malicious code to the end of the file.
When the infected file is run, it drops another malicious file to the same directory where it was executed. The dropped file will be named using the format, "[original_filename]mgr.exe".
The dropped file might connect to and download other malicious files from a remote server.
The malware writer also provides a method to protect a machine from infection, by setting the following registry key and value (this feature was probably needed during development of the file infector):