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How do you remove the Mebroot/Sinowal Boot Sector Trojan also called the HelpAssistant Virus?

Blog Post Update: Mebroot can now be removed using Kaspersky TDSSKiller.  For complete steps, please read this remove virus blog post.

The Mebroot Boot Sector Trojan also called Sinowal or the HelpAssistant Virus is a stealth infection that is not normally detected by antivirus/antimalware applications including Malwarebytes  It is a "banking trojan" which attaches itself to the boot sector of a device.  The trojan secretly captures and transmits user banking information without user intervention to outside parties.  The user of the computer is unaware of this process being performed by the trojan. According to Cisco, "Trojan.Mebroot is reported to have infected nearly 300,000 machines and successfully stolen 270,000 bank account numbers and details for 240,000 credit and debit cards.  Trojan.Mebroot does not contain a method of self-propagation and requires some type of user interaction to spread. Users may download this trojan over P2P networks, IRC servers, FTP servers, or in an e-mail attachment sent from the attacker."

The current version of the Mebroot Boot Sector Trojan cannot be removed by any known antivirus/antimalware application.  Previous versions could be removed using vendor tools such as the Symantec Mebroot Removal Tool.  Other methods that would remove previous versions of this infection included the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool, the Microsoft Recovery Console Command FixMBR/FixBoot, the Gmer MBR -F and the Mebroot Fix by NoahDFear.  (FDisk /R is a deprecated command which was replaced by FixMBR.)

At this writing, there is no known method to remove the current version of this infection.  It cannot be removed using a low level nor standard format.  This is due to the fact that this is a boot sector infection with no known removal method.  Strangely, the only solution for the current version of the Mebroot Boot Sector Trojan infection is to replace the hard disc with a new hard disc.  However if you are infected with a previous version of the Mebroot Boot Sector Trojan, the methods mentioned above will in fact resolve this issue.

Please Note: Your Internet Service Provider may classify the Mebroot Boot Sector Trojan as a "Bot Infection" and disable your internet connection.

Stealth MBR rootkit/Mebroot/Sinowal detector 0.3.7 by Gmer, http://www.gmer.net

device: opened successfully
user: MBR read successfully
kernel: MBR read successfully
user & kernel MBR OK
copy of MBR has been found in sector 0x0BA50E41
malicious code @ sector 0x0BA50E44 !
PE file found in sector at 0x0BA50E5A !

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