At 8:30 pm, US EST, whilst viewing the “What’s it like to sleep with someone?” thread in IMHO (link below), the SDMB browser session tried to download a trojan via one of the images in the advert playing on the page.
On attempt to cancel the action, the virus took control of the window and attempted to ‘run a scan’ on my computer, and download files to my system. My software stopped it, but was unable to capture the virus - I’m using Avast 4.8 (free version) on Win XP and IE 8.0.6x
Of course you won’t have a problem with NoScript, assuming you also have it blocking Flash. That cuts off all the attack vectors. But NoScript is a bit of a pain to use, as you have to whitelist everythign manually, and most people will find Adblock Plus sufficient.
We have forwarded the recent complaints about malware to our ad provider. They have been scrutinizing the ads sent to our site but so far have not been able to identify the offending advertiser. I’ve asked if there’s any specific information they need that would make it easier to get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, please provide as many details as you can when reporting malware - time/date of occurrence, what page you were looking at, exactly what happened, any messages or notices you received, etc. We apologize for the inconvenience.
This morning has to be fourth time in the past two weeks that my system has immediately disconnected me from the SDMB and warned of a Trojan horse blocked.
It occurs to me that, as soon as just a bit more information is available, the collective brainpower of the Doper community should be more than equal to the urgent task of tracing the malware to the live-meatspace location of its human originator and wreaking some vigilante justice of a nature to be determined later but definitely to involve lots of screaming.
if you open your antivirus/antispyware program, there should be a tab or link for viewing the scanning/removal logs, which will tell you what program was removed.
Don’t think that I haven’t been tempted to put out a Call to Action on various companies/people. If I can ever get a volume discount on Tasers, I might do it.
I just had firefox warn me http://checkwinonline.com/fps/q=jy7lno3o was an attack site when I opened a thread in MPSIMS. An ad on the page must of had browser hijack code.
Chrome just gave me the following error when getting ready to reply to this thread:
The website at checkwinonline.com appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that hosts malware can infect your computer.
For detailed information about the problems with this site, visit the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for checkwinonline.com.
Learn more about how to protect yourself from harmful software online.
Don’t bother reporting the thread. The ads are rotated randomly and are not thread specific. I seem to get it on about 5% of the pages viewed.
The SDMB is an excellent vector of attack for malware purveyors considering how many people look at the site, how often malware ads are served, and how many days known malware ads are allowed to remain on the site.