GreatNate1312 wrote:
Today while online a popup out of nowhere came up saying FREE VIRUS SCAN. I clicked the red x but still a real web page popped up and showed like a pretend scan running. Page was up for like 5 secs. To my knowledge nothing was downloaded, but there is an IPS subbmission in Norton.
2 local or remote attackers
offending url- 85.12.44.137
signature id- 50250
I got no popup from noton saying an attack was blocked, but everything seems to be running fine. Thanks in advance!
Nate -- someone else will help you on whether things are OK or not but I'd like to make this point:
With these Malware popups, and sometimes even in email, it does not matter where you click but you will be doing exactly what they want and not what you want. They want to get a reaction from you and then download the malware; you want to close the pop up .... but that [X] is a dummy and works just as they want it to. As you found out it downloaded whatever they wanted to put on your system.
I've come across spam emails where the whole message area, text, images, click on buttons etc were all one image and it was the image that was the trigger for the malware and no matter where you clicked on it you got the message -- just not the one you wanted!
If you have the Status Bar active on your browser -- a bar at the bottom that shows you where the browser is going to check this out some time and watch it when you hold the mouse pointer, without clicking it, over a link. You will see where it is really taking you to and if it's malware you might see that when you hold the mouse button over that [X] it in fact showed up a URL to some site in China or ......
If you ever get a spam email saying your bank or credit card account needs attention and please click on this link -- let's say it says Bank of America Customer Service -- you will be able to see where it is taking you to. The clever ones will include the words Bank of America in the URL but add something that actually sends you to the spammer's website for trouble.
Try it on that link, which should be safe since it is directed to your message here!
If you know all this my apologies but it may help someone else! I hope that Norton did block whatever wanted to come down but if you are worried you can use one of these free utilities which run on demand and not in the background so don't interfere with Norton.
Malwarebyte
Superantispyware
Download and install the free versions since they do all you need by running on command, not in the background. Then update them to the latest definitions and run them in turn.
Both have a good reputation for cleaning up.
If by any chance they refuse to install or won't run after installing because malware is preventing them you can sometimes defeat the malware by changing the name of the exe file to anything except its real title!
Please let us know how you get on.
Hugh
