The first part of this question is more just a FYI to see if anyone has any experience with a particular trojan. The second part is a question.

Part 1
I was trying to help my dad (over the phone since he lives 1500 miles away) with a computer problem. This is a case of the myopic leading the blind. His NAV (all definitions up to date) kept picking up a virus and freezing his machine. We found three trojans (blackbox, dummy, and verifier_byte ). NAV said that it couldn't fix them, but quarantined them. However, as soon as dad would open Outlook Express, a NAV alert would jump up warning him about these trojans again, and would freeze his machine. He would then have to reboot his computer twice since the first boot would invariably come up as a black screen.

NAV identified one other file that seemed to be causing much of this problem. It was named "SIMcss" and was in his Windows directory. I did a search on the web for him and only got two hits on SIMcss (using Google). One site was in Russian, but had the word "BUG" in front of the searched term. The second was BoCleaner's site, which identified this trojan as one of the "unique" trojans that BoCleaner would clean (frankly, the fact that only one application seems to have heard of and can clean a trojan gets the conspiracy juices running even in a trusting guy like me).

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had even heard of this trojan.

Part 2
In the end, my dad took his computer to his "computer guy" who fixed it for him. When he returned the computer, he made two comments about dad's web cam. I don't own a webcam, so I didn't know what to tell my dad when he asked me about it. I would appreciate it if anyone else could answer this for me.

The first thing he said had to do with drivers and their need to be loaded first, so it is a discussion that is outside the interests of this board. The second thing he said, however, was that any computer camera should be kept covered when it is not being used since any camera can be accessed remotely by a knowledgeable hacker. Is this true? It doesn't sound right to me, but what do I know.

Thanks for any information you can give me.

first thing yo should do is separate part 1 an2. Start a second thread about the wcam in General Hardware.........I'll move this also into the av section.....

About 'SIMcss'....it is a trojan. Seems it is a new one for November. I've not found a removal tool, but could suggest a couple of online scans to try to see if they can pick it up and kill it:

TrendMicro

GFi Trojanscan

I know that Kaspersky has it in their data base, but I'm not sure of other AV programs.

Thanks for your responses. As I say, Bill, BoCleaner (BoClean?) suggests that their app will clean it. They also mention a SIMcss.2 in the list of trojans that their software will clean.

I was infected with the Trojan as well. After spending a few hours on the net I figured out a way to remove the virus without any programs.

I rebooted my computer in safe mode, I went into my windows directory and deleted the entire folder that was holding the virus. NAVPMC. It has been 5 days since I removed the files and Norton doesn't throw anymore warning messages. Did a full scann and it's gone.

Here are the links that help you restart your windows in safe mode.

XP http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2001060608000039?Open&src=con_web_nam&docid=2002051411085406&nsf=nav.nsf&view=docid&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=

2000
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2000030212233639?Open&src=con_web_nam&docid=2002051411085406&nsf=nav.nsf&view=docid&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=

98 or ME
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/1999101916343139?Open&src=con_web_nam&docid=2002051411085406&nsf=nav.nsf&view=docid&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=