Pet Talk Issue

[Karen]

We have been having a problem with a few users reporting a virus or malware that was installing itself from a Pet Talk page.

Tonight we shut down Pet Talk to look for anything suspicious, and were unable to find anything in our server's code. We backed up the Pet Talk database and then upgraded to the most recent version of vBulletin, to have all the new security updates.

Paul did not find anything suspicious in the Pet Talk code, however, there might be something suspicious coming from a link, or perhaps even a bad advertisement.

Please let us know if you get any strange pop-ups, especially from anything claiming to be an anti-virus scanner.

If this happens to you, we would like to know what page you were on, and if you know how, please take a screenshot of the Pet Talk Page.

Several people contacted me through Facebook while Pet Talk was down, Glacier said "AVG blocked it" on her machine, so that might be something to consider installing if you are on a PC.

[Cinder & Smoke]

We have been having a problem with a few users reporting a virus or malware
that was installing itself from a Pet Talk page.

Glacier said "AVG blocked it" on her machine,
so that might be something to consider installing if you are on a PC.

"AVG"

See >>> http://free.avg.com/

[kokopup]

Yesterday I got this antivirus thing from no where saying i need to scan for malware, etc. i tried closing it without scanning and it scanned anyway saying
I had 110 trojans. This is a new computer so I found that hard to believe. I was unable to get out of whatever this scanner was so I had to stop the process to escape. If I see it again i will notify you. I am running 3 different anti ( you name it ) types of software and this did not come from any of them.

[Seravieve]

Well I was going to post and say I hadn't had a problem, but then I got this when I went to the main PT page that shows all the forums...

Here's my screenshot of the blocked site...


I have AVG, but its not currently running, so my guess is Firefox caught it.
The web address was http:// library-presents.cn/go.php?id=2006-67&key=0522c7066&p=1 . Looks like PT redirected to that site for some reason.

I've seen a similar ad on other sites.. has a fake pop up window that shows it scanning for viruses.. but its not really your comp scanning, its an image/video/flash whatever... so if you click on it then youre in trouble. Even looks like your My Documents folder.. sneaky sneaky.

[Karen]

Paul just took out the ad code.

It is very helpful to know it was on the main page, thank you very much.

[Seravieve]

Anything for my favorite forum! Welcome.

[Karen]

To clarify, Paul took out the bit of code that puts the ads on the pages. So, in one sense, we hope that was it - because you said it happened to you when you were on the home page, that was what made us suspect that. Everyone, do let us know if it happens to you again, we are trying to track this down. If taking the ad code out stops it, we will have to contact the advertising agency, and inform them of the problem.

Because it seems to happen sporadically, do let us know if it happens to any of you!

[Karen]

Just bumping this up, so everyone sees it!

[blue]

Heck I was thinking my IP got banned. Im happy to see that isnt the case.

[krazyaboutkatz]

Thanks for alerting us. Hopefully you got rid of whatever was causing this. I've had this problem a few times while on Facebook but I knew it was something fake so I quickly closed the link without clicking on it.

[Whisk_Luva]

Ah, I had that pop-up twice in 2 days.... I thought it was just my pc....

Glad it is (hopefully) fixed now.

[Karen]

Well, do clear your cache and your cookies, and let us know if it happens again, okay?

[Hellow]

Funny, I never have gotten anything like anyone was mentioning. Although that would have made for a *hilarious* screenshot.

[pomtzu]

Yesterday I got this antivirus thing from no where saying i need to scan for malware, etc. i tried closing it without scanning and it scanned anyway saying
I had 110 trojans. This is a new computer so I found that hard to believe. I was unable to get out of whatever this scanner was so I had to stop the process to escape. If I see it again i will notify you. I am running 3 different anti ( you name it ) types of software and this did not come from any of them.

I have had this exact same thing happen twice in the past few months. I couldn't stop it from running and had to shut down completely and then run a comprehensive scan.
Maybe this is why I'm getting bombarded with Span lately???

[smokey the elder]

That popup appeared on my work computer once; I closed it and informed IT and they ran an extra virus scan on my PC; it was clean.