Tom Stoeckel of Autodesk Product Support has detailed on the Without a Net blog a bogus AutoCAD ObjectARX application causing some problems for a few Chinese AutoCAD users. Malicious code writers are nothing new but just be cautious about the ObjectARX applications you download or use as well as most anything you download or install on your computers.
AutoCAD Adware Details
Tom Stoeckel of Autodesk Product Support has detailed on the Without a Net blog a bogus AutoCAD ObjectARX application causing some problems for a few Chinese AutoCAD users.
So what is one to do if they have already been infected?
Thanks
Tom states that a few cycles of an anti virus program should rid the adware and also make sure you know what is ls using arxload. It appears to only be hitting Chinese systems. and the antivirus firms are stalking it. The adware creeps will try anything to find a way to get their malicious software on a machine so downloading unknown software or using those “free” download wares are not a good idea.
Best Regards,
Shaan
Not to confuse free download wares with free add-ins. Maybe Autodesk should come out with a certification program for free add-ins so you can tell if it’s Autodesk trusted or not. The Autodesk “App” store.
Well Shaan that suggestion “a few cycles of an anti-virus program should rid the adware” is not the case in our situation.
This thing has spread and affected alot of drawings.
some of the annoyances:
we get a prompt “to install a language pack”
we get acad.vlx files being written to various locations of both the server and th local machine
express tools “acetutil.lsp” and “acad.mnl” files get a line vlisp code added to them to; find a file named logo.gif and rename it to acad.vlx
we have come up with some ways around some of the issues
but it’s a bandaid on top of a gushing wound.
I know this is not the place to get any support per se, but how could we get in contact with an autodesk person to look into this and provide some information and other ways to fix this issue.
thanks
Richard,
I checked with our product support and they do not believe this is the same issue in this blog post affecting only Chinese based AutoCAD.
You may have drawings edited with another language which will prompt you to install that language to properly read all the text and data.
Best Regards,
Shaan
We are currently researching another potential virus that is found in an acad.vlx which is not an Autodesk file. I hope to provide containment and details very soon. For the time being be careful of the directories of files you use from outside and make sure macro protection enabled.