Endpoint Protection

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  • 1.  Virus printing random ASCII characters

    Posted Oct 07, 2014 03:28 PM

    I am dealing with what I believe to be a virus that is causing our network printer to print random ASCII. Please see the attatched photo. I have done quite a bit of research on this and ran many different virus detection programs to no avail. We are running Computers that have Windows 7 and 8.1. We have Symantec Endpoint Protection on all of them. I did find this article already: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH190982, however it was not helpful. Does anyone have any advice that could help me track this thing down? I have already ran SEP, malwarebytes, super-antispyware, and rkill. Thanks in advanced for the help. virusprintascii.JPG



  • 2.  RE: Virus printing random ASCII characters

    Posted Mar 11, 2015 12:33 PM

    Maybe the printer is having some sort of issue? Have you reset to default settings?

    When did this start? Does every machine that prints to it have this issue?



  • 3.  RE: Virus printing random ASCII characters

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Mar 17, 2015 09:30 AM

    The MOST common issue that would cause this are:

    1) Corrupted print job - delete the print job, turn off the printer for a few minutes and then power it on to clear out the memory.

    2) Corrupt printer drivers - reinstall with the correct drivers for the printer model.

    Then try again.



  • 4.  RE: Virus printing random ASCII characters

    Posted Mar 23, 2015 11:46 AM

    We have the same issue, have deleted drivers re-installed same result - if we print from other PC's they print OK..Drivers are the same.. Started after Windows 8.1 update last week..

     

    Windows Test Page prints, but Logo on Right prints black box above and below and and ascii characters all other text is fine.

    if you print a word document with hello it print garbage.. run full antivirus and malware with no issue reported..

    any ideas



  • 5.  RE: Virus printing random ASCII characters

    Posted Mar 23, 2015 11:59 AM

    by the way its all our network printers whether its Lexmark C910 or C912 or Kyocera.. other pcs are OK just 2 pcs do this.. it really odd..



  • 6.  RE: Virus printing random ASCII characters

    Posted Mar 23, 2015 12:14 PM

    Hi Naviris,

    Thanks for the post.  The threat which caused printes to spew out ransom ASCII is Trojan.Milicenso - see Security Response's blog post: Trojan.Milicenso: A Paper Salesman’s Dream Come True

    Incompatability between a printer and computer or corrupted print jobs can also cause the same garbage to appear.  Rather than assume that a threat is present, I strongly recommend running this diagnostic to learn more:

    How to run the Threat Analysis Scan in Symantec Help (SymHelp)
    http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH215519

     

    If there are any suspicious files present, that should highlight them.  Submit those to Security Response!  &: )  If there is none, troubleshoot the printer.

    Please do update this thread with your progress!

    With thanks and best regards,

    Mick



  • 7.  RE: Virus printing random ASCII characters
    Best Answer

    Posted Mar 23, 2015 12:18 PM

    I only recently rediscovered this post. It turns out that it was not a virus printing this at all. It was an error with the PCL6 driver. Once I changed the computer in question to the Post Script driver the problem stopped. Thanks everyone.