An unwelcome guest!

Somehow I received an unwelcome guest on my computer yesterday evening called Trojan[dot]Agent[dot]ED, although Malwarebytes seemed to have caught it. I ran a full check overnight and it appears to have gone. However my computer knowledge is such that I cannot be sure. It seemed to have been lodged in my copy of MS Office 2003, and in particular WORD?
I wish I knew how it got there as I have imported very few EXE files recently. Being a natural born pessimist I'm wondering whether it's still lurking in the depths of my computer!
I have looked on line and tried to follow the suggested guides and as said earlier hope that I've removed it!

Hi Alec

Looking around the Net, this looks like a particularly nasty piece of work. I've tried to find websites that are trustworthy and looking at malwarebytes' own forum this chap seems to have had a similar experience:

https://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?/topic/151129-trojanagented-help-please/

It looks like removing it is a multi-step and patience-requiring process. A lot of this thread is him posting his logs but it looks like the steps are there.

Here is an alternative method:

http://malwarefixes.com/threats/trojan-agent-ed/

And a third option:

http://malwaretips.com/blogs/trojan-agent-removal/

However, before proceeding, I would be more comfortable getting a second opinion. Can Ged offer any advice?

In terms of how you caught it, it looks like it can be caught in a number of ways, including a 'drive by' of an infected website. I wouldn't beat yourself up too much as it appears to be rather sneaky. However, if you are still using MS Office 2003 I would consider using one of the alternatives. It's no longer supported by Microsoft and is therefore a prime target for this sort of thing. Microsoft's Office 365 is a good option if you can live with the subscription model. Otherwise OpenOffice has long been a respected open-source alternative. It's branched-off sibling LibreOffice is also earning plaudits.

Stephen
Many thanks for the suggestions. I had already run Norton Power Eraser and I've just run your suggested Sophos Virus Removal Tool. The latter stated that the computer is clean. The former ended by suggesting several programmes including TGATools2a and Conbuilder might be risky!
MS Office 2003 is working OK at the moment, but perhaps I need to either go for a later edition or try Open Office - I have a copy somewhere!
Malwarebytes picked up the trojan and quarantined it and can only hope it will do so again.

Hi Alec

Good to hear. Norton does get a bit twitchy with many of our UKTS installation files and has quarantined many of them on a 'reputation' basis ie. we don't know enough about it so we're going to quarantine it anyway.

What do you use for your real-time virus scanning?

Cheers

I have both Norton and Malwarebytes, of which the latter was purchased after an attempt was made to hack into my on-line bank account - don't have an on-line bank account now though!

You should be OK, then. Trojans are sneaky buggers and the malware writers are getting more and more clever.