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Has anyone else had malware / virus trouble lately?  

post #1 of 184
3/29/10 at 6:39pm
Thread Starter 
Over the last 5 weeks I've been hit 3 times with viral nastiness, and it looks like the common element each time was the CHUD message boards (definitely twice, as the boards were the only thing I had open at the time, the other time I had the boards and a couple of other sites open).

Thankfully the most recent infection attempt (ave.exe) was caught and quarantined by Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, but it's getting to be a pain. I've switched to Firefox; Java, Adobe and Windows are up-to-date; I have Trend-Micro Antivirus and Malwarebytes (paid version with active defense). Has anybody else been having troubles catching shit from the boards or main site, or is it just me? (I fully accept the possibility that it's just me.)

Can anybody offer any suggestions to help me prevent these annoyances? Something I should update or install? Any advice would be quite welcome.
post #2 of 184
3/29/10 at 6:41pm
I kept getting persistent virus warnings from ads trying to load at the top of the boards this morning.
post #3 of 184
3/29/10 at 7:17pm
I have no fucking clue. It would be good if you said on which browser you caught it.
post #4 of 184
3/29/10 at 8:58pm
yeah got XP Defender browsing though Firefox.
post #5 of 184
3/29/10 at 8:58pm
I've never had any problems with the site. I use Firefox and I've got McAfee 2010 and Windows Defender running, and I regularly scan with Malwarebytes and Spybot Search and Destroy. I also browse the site from my BlackBerry and that's never caused problems.
post #6 of 184
3/29/10 at 9:04pm
Whatever you do, don't mention the ads.

post #7 of 184
3/29/10 at 9:07pm
I don't block ads.
post #8 of 184
3/29/10 at 9:17pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Feral Akodon View Post
I have no fucking clue. It would be good if you said on which browser you caught it.
First time with IE7, then I switched to Firefox and got tagged twice more.

I don't use ad blockers, and I respect Nick and co. too much to do so, but if it occurs again and it seems that CHUD is the culprit I may have to leave the boards for a while. (No big loss to the community, but it sucks for me.)

I've noticed that if an ad looks like it's taking an inordinately long time to load, it's usually malware.
post #9 of 184
3/29/10 at 9:38pm
I don't know how the hell it happened, but my brand new laptop crashed last Saturday, and I had to completely wipe it and reboot it. It's been working fine ever since, and I was able to salvage what little I had installed in it, but it was a pain. I use Firefox and had Defender Pro 2010 15-1 running.

My friend installed AVG free on it, but I'm thinking of getting the full paid anti-virus software or Kaspersky which I've heard is really damn good.
post #10 of 184
3/29/10 at 10:30pm
No issues, but I do have noscript installed over Firefox. Not ADBLOCK, noscript which prompts which scripts are allowed to run.

Ludwig,
PM me if needed.
post #11 of 184
3/29/10 at 11:28pm
I got this one yesterday.

post #12 of 184
3/30/10 at 10:21am
Ugh, it's happening again. I'm on Firefox right now. My company's "Trend Micro Server/Security Alert" keeps going off blocking 2 (?) ads each time I load a page of this forum due to "harmful content."
post #13 of 184
3/30/10 at 10:23am
I got hit with one last night as well: Trojan.FakeAV, and I definitely got it from this site. I got rid of it after 3+ hours of effort. I use IE7.

By the way, it cost me money to get it fixed. Thanks.
post #14 of 184
3/30/10 at 10:25am
I got hit with XP Defender after browsing the boards last week. Something's definitely fishy.
post #15 of 184
3/30/10 at 10:37am
My virus detector/warning stated that the address of the offending "thing/ad" always began with: http://openx....

Not sure if that helps in discovering the source at all.
post #16 of 184
3/30/10 at 2:25pm
I too, fully recommend No Script running in firefox. I dont block ads but I do block certain scripts. It's a pain when going to new sites but after a while you get it all sorted out. I can even surf the porn without fear....sort of...
post #17 of 184
3/30/10 at 2:32pm
Yeah, I don't have any virus protection software because I don't go "warez" shopping, or visiting other sites that have viruses. Then again, I guess I do!
post #18 of 184
3/30/10 at 2:53pm
Sir, download clamwin- totally free. As is clam sentinel.
post #19 of 184
3/30/10 at 3:13pm
I've been hit twice this morning with warnings that the chud.com site was "attacking" me with something. I've been using the same software package for years, and this is the first time it's ever happened. The software shut down the site and redirected me to a homepage. I didn't think anything of it till I saw this thread. If it happens again, I'll post the message in detail.
post #20 of 184
3/30/10 at 3:18pm
Please do. I'm not getting anything at all.
post #21 of 184
3/30/10 at 3:38pm
I'll take a screencap of mine as well if it happens again. Oddly, it only seems to happen in the mornings for me and has for the past two days.
post #22 of 184
3/30/10 at 5:56pm
I got the ave.exe trojan that nekkerbee got - the only thing I had open at the time was the main page. It more or less completely took over my machine; after about four hours I finally got rid of it (I hope).

And as I was on the main page just now, Symantec deleted a couple more viruses. I hope you guys get this sorted soon.

post #23 of 184
3/30/10 at 5:57pm
Am I safe on a mac? I just got one, so help an old man out. If not, later bitches.
post #24 of 184
3/30/10 at 6:04pm
If you need to get rid of ave.exe (or Trojan.FakeAV, which I think is the same one), the instructions here seemed to work perfectly: http://www.malwarehelp.org/ave-exe-a...rean-2010.html

Just scroll down a bit to where it says "ave.exe removal."
post #25 of 184
3/30/10 at 6:06pm
Please keep documenting any incidents. These are 99.99% certainly the fault of the ad company, so that's who we have to show this stuff to in order to get it fixed.
post #26 of 184
3/30/10 at 6:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by devincf View Post
Please keep documenting any incidents. These are 99.99% certainly the fault of the ad company, so that's who we have to show this stuff to in order to get it fixed.
Will they reimburse me the money that I had to pay Norton last night to get my computer working again?
post #27 of 184
3/30/10 at 6:10pm
Serious question: Is the site safe to check from a work computer? They'd be annoyed with me if my surfing killed the computer. We have firewalls and norton and I've not seen any warnings, but someone here opened an email last year and nuked a computer as a result and we were not allowed to surf the web for like 3 months afterwards..
post #28 of 184
3/31/10 at 2:35am
Gorilla Nation is looking into it right now.
post #29 of 184
3/31/10 at 11:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Princess Kate View Post
Serious question: Is the site safe to check from a work computer? They'd be annoyed with me if my surfing killed the computer. We have firewalls and norton and I've not seen any warnings, but someone here opened an email last year and nuked a computer as a result and we were not allowed to surf the web for like 3 months afterwards..
It is as safe as any other site out there. Just be cautious and always ensure you have an active scanner running on any machine, not just work.
post #30 of 184
4/1/10 at 1:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Augustine View Post
yeah got XP Defender browsing though Firefox.
Didn't think it was CHUD until it happened on another laptop while I was browsing. Sucks.
post #31 of 184
4/1/10 at 2:24am
Just to chime in with another instance: I got zapped by ave.exe just yesterday. I wasn't entirely certain where I was exposed, but it may well have been the boards here.
post #32 of 184
4/1/10 at 8:58am
Same here. Firefox went down completely, then a bullshit XP Antimalware window started up. I closed that, ran Norton, which found the Trojan.FakeAve virus. Norton prompted me to reboot and at that point I couldn't open Firefox, Photoshop, any program but IE, oddly. Spent $100 to have Norton fix it remotely. My up-to-date virus protection DID NOT BLOCK THIS VIRUS. That was a PC, typing this from a Macbook.
post #33 of 184
4/1/10 at 9:10am
Been using Chrome since last week, with AdBlock but CHUD excepted, with no issues, and my AVG hasn't caught anything.
post #34 of 184
4/1/10 at 9:45am
Got rocked again this morning with XP Defender while reading the Clash of the Titans post release thread. This is my farewell til things get under control
post #35 of 184
4/1/10 at 9:47am
For the AV virus, I use Malwarebytes combined with a fixexe.reg that allows be to start it, as the AV virus will fuck up the exe of the other programs. I got it on CHUD.com, and only here, so it's probably not a Gorilla Nation problem, but a local one.

Start giving a shit about it guys.
post #36 of 184
4/1/10 at 10:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
Been using Chrome since last week, with AdBlock but CHUD excepted, with no issues, and my AVG hasn't caught anything.
Been using Chrome & Kaspersky. It seems a safe combination.
post #37 of 184
4/1/10 at 10:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Same here. Firefox went down completely, then a bullshit XP Antimalware window started up. I closed that, ran Norton, which found the Trojan.FakeAve virus. Norton prompted me to reboot and at that point I couldn't open Firefox, Photoshop, any program but IE, oddly. Spent $100 to have Norton fix it remotely. My up-to-date virus protection DID NOT BLOCK THIS VIRUS. That was a PC, typing this from a Macbook.
That's EXACTLY what happened to me on Monday, Phil...word for word, even down to the $100 bill from Norton. The only difference is that I was using IE7, not Firefox.
post #38 of 184
4/1/10 at 10:41am
If anyone else is computer illiterate as me, I recommend going to norton now and printing out instructions for starting your computer in safe mode. If you get hit, and can't run any programs, try running it in safe mode before calling Norton. But Sandeep over there is my hero.
post #39 of 184
4/1/10 at 10:58am
Ok, here's what I keep getting. Let me know if it's too small to read, should be ok:

post #40 of 184
4/1/10 at 2:18pm
For what it's worth, I actually got two alerts from AVG over the past week while solely on Chud, with the ads blocked and while using Firefox. Not a good sign...

Not to pile on to those who paid out of pocket for their respective fixes, but it should never come down to that. With backups in place, just wipe the hard drive clean and do a fresh install. It takes me roughly around an hour to go from a hard drive wipe to being back online with Windows SP3 in place.

Again though, it all comes down to keeping constant with your backups, and I know that many people don't worry about those until it's past the point.
post #41 of 184
4/1/10 at 2:49pm
I haven't seen anything virus-like from CHUD at all -- for some reason I've avoided the storms or am so infected that my pc is healthy like Mr Burns' Three Stooges Syndrome.

Used to view solely in Firefox + AdBlock Plus + NoScript but, to support the site, I have CHUD running in an IE Tab (IE 8).
post #42 of 184
4/1/10 at 2:52pm
i don't know how many of you go there but NEWSARAMA is all but closed down with malware and the like.

I do most of my browsing at work, so I tend to let the tech guys here deal with the flaming bags of poop I leave on their doorstep each morning.
post #43 of 184
4/1/10 at 3:53pm
By the way most of the ads I get from CHUD are oriented to local market so perhaps that prevents some chunk of chewers to get contaminated.
post #44 of 184
4/1/10 at 4:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
just wipe the hard drive clean and do a fresh install.
Is that all? That's certainly reasonable. Sorry for all the grousing, everyone!
post #45 of 184
4/1/10 at 5:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Is that all? That's certainly reasonable. Sorry for all the grousing, everyone!
More reasonable than throwing away a hundred spot you didn't have to. Just saying.
post #46 of 184
4/1/10 at 5:36pm
Nah, I'm loaded. And I don't know how to do what you suggested. I'll call you next time. Easiest 20 bucks you'll ever make. I'm assuming.
post #47 of 184
4/1/10 at 5:39pm
Both options suck.
post #48 of 184
4/1/10 at 5:39pm
It was worth it to me to pay to get the job done RIGHT. Of course, I shouldn't have had to even DEAL with the fucking virus in the first place.
post #49 of 184
4/1/10 at 5:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
It was worth it to me to pay to get the job done RIGHT. Of course, I shouldn't have had to even DEAL with the fucking virus in the first place.
I agree completely. This site seems to have a history of these security concerns. Why is that?


Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Nah, I'm loaded. And I don't know how to do what you suggested. I'll call you next time. Easiest 20 bucks you'll ever make. I'm assuming.
Nah, keep your twenty and go buy some manners. As you have demonstrated by not being able to simply take or leave advice graciously, you can only benefit from any and every cent spent from here on out.
post #50 of 184
4/1/10 at 5:52pm
Same could be said for yourself Agent Z. As you so blithely assume that wiping a hard drive, reinstalling windows and then reinstalling your back-up to be a common skill. It most definitely is not a common skill.
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