Hijacked browser

[Buddman (Adam)]

Help...pleeeeeeease.

2 Days ago my internet browser went wierd. No matter what site I went to another tab would open up and send me to dodgy sites. If I closed them my browser would stop responding, in fact most of the time the browser would stop. I was using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 so I deleted and reinstalled - no fix. Deleted and installed Firefox with no settings brought over from IE7 - no fix. Firefox in safe mode - no fix.

Everything else is working fine, email etc. My virus checker found a virus that had come in at about the same time called financestoc_com (virus = html:iframe-inf)

This is really getting me ....annoyed......

Any ideas?

Adam

[Ian Robinson]

Try turning off the modem , or disconnecting it , and then doing a system restore to a date that preceeds when the problem started .

Have you obtained the virus recovery app from your antuvirus app vendor ?

Increase your security settings and firewall settings.

If that doesn't work and eliminate the problem - get onto another computer and look up how to fix the problem , get rid of it (some of these a coded to continually reinstall on start up and are hard to get rid of (as they hide in amongst the hidden syst files) and you have to find it's installer to stop the problem.

Good luck.

[Clarry (Clayton)]

You need Highjack This. I had the same problem once & this fixed it.

[MrB (Simon)]

Yep, try Hijack This, and Spybot Search & Destroy.... and anything else you can get your hands on.

[wasyoungonce (Brendan)]

Download and run Malwarebytes anti-malware:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

One of the best anti-malware programs available nowdays.

[Ian Robinson]

I downloaded HiJackThis ages ago but never installed it, didn't need it.

SpyBot is pretty good, I install and run it monthly, it does however conflict with some of my apps so I uninstall it after I'm done.

The hijacker has probably added something nasty to your registry file and autoexec file that must be reversed to stop them.

[Buddman (Adam)]

Thanks for the advice, I worked most of the night on another computer and found similar advice.

I now have a range of applications but the one that did the job was malwarebytes, cleaning up while XP was in safe mode. Took a few attempts mind you but now all is restored and working slightly better than it was.

My virus scanner (Avast) updates at least once a day, sometimes more, and it was picking up the same virus trying to be transmitted from the hijack sites yet it missed the original one on Friday so I guess it was a newish version.

I wish there was a way to hurt the *******s that sent the Trojan in the first place. I have been hearing about lots of people who have picked up similar things in the last week or so.

Anyway, all good and thank you for your time. I hope that it has gone for good, if not I know how to tidy it up.

Adam

[ving (David)]

once you have the problem sorted may i sugest you use Opera instead.

[Buddman (Adam)]

Hi David,

I was considering Firefox as my default browser. Would Opera be better?

Adam

[vindictive666 (John)]

Originally Posted by Buddman

Hi David,

I was considering Firefox as my default browser. Would Opera be better?

Adam

ive been using firefox ever since it came out no problems


regards john

[Tandum (Robin)]

Problems may be on the horizon for Firefox according to this article.

[edit]
Thought I'd add that I fix this sort of crap daily and I use hijackthis, autoruns and rootkitrevealer to find out where/what the infection is, then I use bartPE to boot from a cd and manually delete/disconnect the suckers. AVG cleans up what's left.

[Kal (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by wasyoungonce

Download and run Malwarebytes anti-malware:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

One of the best anti-malware programs available nowdays.

I had a similar browser popup problem last week and the malwarebytes program cleaned my system. I give it three thumbs up

[ving (David)]

Originally Posted by Buddman

Hi David,

I was considering Firefox as my default browser. Would Opera be better?

Adam

being that firefox is probably the second most used browser I'd say that the number of "bad people" out there trying to attack it would be higher than opera... only about 8-9% of board users here use opera.

opera also uses less memory while running...

look, it cost nothing to try either fire fox or opera so run both of them and see which one you like. I run EI7, FF and opera on my home computer... stuck on EI6 here at work tho

[wasyoungonce (Brendan)]

Originally Posted by Tandum

Problems may be on the horizon for Firefox according to this article.

NoScript and Adblock plus

Maketh firefox the best most secure browser

[Tinker]

Originally Posted by wasyoungonce

NoScript and Adblock plus

Maketh firefox the best most secure browser

Couldn't agree more