Removing the Hupigon Virus

The Hupigon virus is a potentially devastating type of computer malware that originated in China. This malware gives hackers full control of your computer. The Hupigon virus presents several challenges to removal, with one being that it's hard for many users to tell if they even have the virus on their computers.

How You Get the Hupigon Virus

The Hupigon virus is not self-spreading. This means that the virus does not have any mechanisms to automatically propagate itself. The only way you can get this virus is directly from a hacker, by opening a questionable email attachment, visiting a phishing website or, with this virus in particular, responding to an unknown person via instant messaging.

Some users have reported that their computers became infected with the Hupigon virus after they responded to messages from an unknown person on Skype from China, who claimed to simply want to chat with them to practice their English. The unknown person then sent corrupt links over Skype, and when they were opened, they unleashed the Hupigon virus. As always, never open anything that has not originated from a completely trusted source.

What the Hupigon Virus Does

While there are many computer infections that can bog down your computer, implement scareware to try to get you to make fraudulent purchases or to attempt to steal your personal and financial data, this virus is different. Once a computer has been infected with the Hupigon virus and it makes a copy of itself in the Windows System folder, the virus gives the hacker full remote access to the computer. The hacker can then completely control the computer at any time from afar.

Just for starters, this means that hackers can send and receive messages from a user's email account, create logs from keystrokes that allow them to steal passwords and credit card numbers, use the computer to attack other computers or servers, or even record video with the user's webcam. The hacker even has rootkit functionality so that he can hide files in stealth mode and perform a virtually limitless number of other malicious tasks.

How to Tell if You Have the Virus

Unless a hacker is obvious about his remote control of your computer system, it can be hard to tell if you have the Hupigon virus. If you suddenly notice odd emails in your sent folder or any other evidence that someone other than yourself or a trusted family member has been using your computer, you have reason to be suspicious.

There is nothing on your computer that will outrightly call itself Hupigon; however, when the virus copies itself to your Windows System folder, it typically creates a file with one of the following aliases: calc.exe, cmd.exe, mmc.exe, mspaint.exe, mstsc.exe, notepad.exe, osk.exe, sndrec.exe, sndvol32.exe, svchost.exe or winchat.exe. You can also use anti-virus software to help you scan for and identify the threat.

How to Remove the Hupigon Virus

Manually removing the virus means reading through a long list of instructions. To remove any virus successfully, you must know your computer's operating system well and be somewhat tech savvy. Removing this virus manually is also time consuming. However, top-rated anti-virus software such as BitDefender, Kaspersky and Webroot are all very effective at identifying and automatically removing pre-existing viruses on your computer.

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