I recently experienced a malware scare on both my laptop and desktop. While working on a homework assignment involving GitHub commands, I got a pop-up from Malwarebytes indicating that there were two pieces of malware—msgmerge.exe and msginit.exe—on my laptop. I quickly quarantined and deleted them. The files were found in my bin folder under C:mys64usrbin. Later that day, when I opened my desktop to access the same homework stored in OneDrive, I encountered the same two malware detections again. After quarantining those, I ran multiple scans with Malwarebytes and Windows Defender and didn't find anything unusual at first. However, upon returning to my laptop the next day, I found seven new virus detections that also appeared on my desktop. I'm concerned that something allowed these viruses to spread, potentially through OneDrive. Any advice on what I should do next? Besides the detections, both computers seem to be functioning normally with no other symptoms.
1 Answer
Did you install MSYS2 or Git for Windows recently? It's possible that those files are related to what you were working on with GitHub. Since your homework is on OneDrive, if there's a rogue file on one device, it could easily jump to the other. My gut tells me it might be a false positive, but you should restore those files from quarantine and check them on VirusTotal just to be safe. Better safe than sorry!
I downloaded Git for Windows a while back, but not recently. I'm just worried about those seven new detections! Could they be linked somehow? Thanks for the tip about VirusTotal!