iPhone Virus? Strange Chinese Characters and .exe message

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Level 1

8 points

iPhone Virus? Strange Chinese Characters and .exe message

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has seen this type of message on their iPhones when connecting to their computer :

http://anthonypaulo.googlepages.com/iPhoneMessage.jpg

My gf and I each have an iPhone and whenever we connect either of them to the computer we get the usual dialog box with our name on it but for some reason it also has some chinese characters on it along with some .exe filename. I see no reason for these to be there and I suspect a virus.

Can anyone identify this problem and whether I should be concerned?

Regards,

Anthony

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Mar 6, 2009 9:46 PM

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Answer 1

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Mar 8, 2009 6:58 AM in response to AnthonyPaulO

And if you've noticed you've received no replies from anyone.

This could be because your profile shows you are using a Mac but the box you are getting is on a Vista PC, which you belatedly added. I checked again with the person I know with a Vista PC and they said they have never seen this sort of problem but as you say their setup is such, after the installation routine, that they do not see this box.

If it is a virus it would be a Windows/Vista virus, but my guess is it is more likely to be a corrupted driver. But why guess, as I said earlier visit the Microsoft site since this is a Microsoft problem. You might very quickly find someone who has experienced the same issue.

The question regarding where you bought the phone was prior to your slowly releasing to us your whole story and people have posted issues here that turned out to be related to buying a knockoff iPhone. Windows has a long history with problems with drive assignments resulting in multiple devices being assigned the same drive letter which results in, well, the type of results that you are seeing. This is covered in this article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1493

Sorry that you think I am unable to issue an informed answer, but I do admit I am not up to date on Windows viruses. But I do know enough to check with Windows sites or virus sites to try to find that sort of information. I'll back out now, maybe someone else will wander along. There won't be any Apple developers who answer, they aren't on this site and they do not write Microsoft code. You can send your problem here to see if they can find a Windows solution:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Good luck, and if you post somewhere else please remember to post all the relevant information the first time.

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Answer 2

Mar 6, 2009 10:14 PM in response to AnthonyPaulO

Not sure what the answer is, but since there are no viruses that affect or infect OS X and the iPhone runs an optimized version of OS X, and it isn't possible to install anything on an iPhone from a website or from a received email except for photos (and I haven't heard about any viruses being embedded in a jpeg file), doubtful this has anything to do with an iPhone virus.

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Answer 3

Mar 6, 2009 11:47 PM in response to Allan Sampson

It's not a phone virus - something has messed up your registry, judging from this thread it appears to be some windows malware/virus

http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:Lf0um2F4_dQJ:www.geekstogo.com/forum/C-Wind ows-system32-khhec-exe-t184114.htmlplasrv.exe10005&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ca

I'd backup your data and re-format your PC asap.

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Answer 4

AnthonyPaulO Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 7, 2009 12:02 AM in response to KevLeviathan

Hi,

I checked the link you sent but there's nothing there to indicate that my issue is related to the malware report posted on that page. All they had was a list of processes for that particular user and PlaSrv.exe just happened to be one of many processes running on his machine, which is expected.

Regards,

Anthony

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,200 points

Mar 7, 2009 5:37 AM in response to AnthonyPaulO

The characters in your photo are not just Chinese but include other stuff like Hindi. That would normally just indicate some kind of encoding mismatch between the text and what is being used by the device. On an iphone there is no way to fix that.

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Answer 6

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Mar 7, 2009 10:55 AM in response to AnthonyPaulO

There is a drive conflict between the iPhone and some other device on the PC which is why that box, which has nothing to do with the iPhone or iTunes, is opening. What other USB devices are connected to the PC and is it on a network?

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Answer 7

AnthonyPaulO Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 7, 2009 1:24 PM in response to deggie

Hi,

There's no drive conflict... the OS (Vista) is simply displaying an auto-play prompt whenever a USB device gets connected to the PC. Part of the prompt's functionality is to display the device's name as well as options on what the user wants done. In this case my iPhone gets connected to the PC, triggering the auto-play mechanism in Windows Vista, which then queries the USB device for information, then displays the device's title (Melissa's iPhone), as well as options pertinent to the device in question. None of this is due to there being a drive conflict, this is simply the way it's done.

The problem is that, along with the title, some non-relevant information is being displayed in asian characters as well as some executable filename. "Melissa's iPhone" is all that should be displayed, and the fact that there's all this other gibberish there smells suspicious and is indicative of something wrong, possibly malware or a buffer overflow error which could result in viral code being executed.

I just find it hard to believe that I'm the only one on earth experiencing this problem.

Regards,

Anthony

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Answer 8

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Mar 7, 2009 2:17 PM in response to AnthonyPaulO

I don't use Vista myself, but the sole person I know who uses it does not get that Autoplay box, when they connect their iPhone it opens iTunes and syncs.

I would surmise this is a Vista/computer configuration problem on your part and not anything the iPhone is doing. You might want to explore over at http://www.microsoft.com

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Answer 9

AnthonyPaulO Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 7, 2009 2:46 PM in response to deggie

Hi,

That's because at some point he checked the checkbox "Always do this for this device", which disables the prompt and automatically performs whatever option he specified whemever he connects his iPhone. I never did this since I always want to be prompted, which is why I get the prompts. The prompt, however, should NOT contain the messages I'm getting.

Regards,

Anthony

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Answer 10

AnthonyPaulO Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 8, 2009 12:16 AM in response to deggie

Hi Deggie,

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm looking for answers from people who've experienced the same problem or from Apple developers who can explain why I'm having this issue and whether it's something to be concerned about or not. All this back and forth Q&A about where my iPhone was purchased, about it being a device conflict and about it being a configuration issue due to someone you know not getting any dialog box when plugging in their iPhone isn't getting us anywhere and is, quite frankly, irrelevant. Unfortunately, all of your replies indicate that you lack the necessary understanding of the systems involved to be able to issue an informed answer. I never claimed that this has anything to do with iTunes or the iPhone OS; I just claim to have a dialog with strange characters and executable filenames popping up when I plug in my iPhone, and wondering if it may be attributable to a virus. When plugging in other USB devices and being prompted by dialog boxes, I don't get similar behavior... it only happens with the iPhones. I really appreciate your helpful nature and people like you truly make this world a better place; this particular problem, however, is beyond both of our capabilities to answer and I'm hoping someone out there with the necessary knowledge will by chance read this message and be able to take me out of my misery lol.

Regards,

Anthony

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Answer 11

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,200 points

Mar 8, 2009 6:25 AM in response to AnthonyPaulO

I'm looking for answers from people who've experienced the same problem or from Apple developers who can explain why I'm having this issue and whether it's something to be concerned about or not.

The outlook for accomplishing your goal does not seem very promising. The mystery message refers to plasrv.exe, which is not some kind of virus but a standard Windows system file. As far as I can tell, you can Google it to death without finding any reference to what you are seeing or what role this file plays in Windows. Perhaps you should also try in some kind of Windows forum putting that file name in the subject line.

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Answer 12

matttye88

Level 2

496 points

Mar 8, 2009 7:36 AM in response to AnthonyPaulO

It looks like the system believes your iPhones name is "Melissa's iPhone" followed by those characters. When you connect your phone and open it up in iTunes, what does iTunes show as the name?

PlaSrv.exe is a Windows system process, although I'm not 100% sure exactly what it does.

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Answer 13

AnthonyPaulO Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 12, 2009 3:53 PM in response to matttye88

Hi,

iTunes displays the name just fine. The name of the executable is different every time, and it happens on both phones. It seems to be a buffer overflow issue where it's displaying whatever text happens to be in whatever buffer somewhere.

Regards,

Anthony

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Answer 14

Randy Fast

Level 4

1,432 points

Mar 12, 2009 4:05 PM in response to AnthonyPaulO

That happens to me as well. Seems totally random, sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. No idea what causes it, I always figured it was something with the drivers being wak.

Edit - This is on Vista, my XP computer is dead.

Message was edited by: Randy Fast

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Answer 15

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Mar 7, 2009 4:49 AM in response to AnthonyPaulO

You are getting that display box on a Mac and you say that except for the chinese characters it is normal?

I've never seen a display box resembling that one. Where did you buy your iPhone?

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