As I was browsing this forum, everything froze up for a second and then dozens of new windows started popping up at a very rapid rate.
Obviously this was caused by a malicious program of some kind and I either contracted it here or from another site.
After there were around 100 windows up and still more popping up at an alarming rate, I rebooted my p.c., disabled my Internet access and ran both AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy.
AdAware found only tracking cookies but Spybot found a particularly vicious spyware program called "Movieland".
I Googled it and found out that it's quite nasty.
It pretty much ground my computer to a halt. (assuming it was Movieland that caused it)
I've also noticed considerable slowdown on this site tonight as well. (10-18)
Andrew, you might want to check everything out on your end to be sure there's nothing wrong.
Since the problem occured while here, I was wondering if any of you had experienced anything similar.
Nothing. I have done a check of files that would be suspect, but they are matching up with my local copies (unchanged). I will run a complete check, but that is going to take a while to return a result.
If anyone sees anything, of course let me know.
Hmmmm...
Everything seems to be ok now that I removed that spyware last night.
I have no idea where I could have gotten it from.
All I know is that it activated here.
And the coincidence that the spyware was called Movieland and it activated itself on a movie message board.
Weird.
Nothing found during my check, including browsing the site with an unpatched version of IE from a test computer.
It is strange, but it could also matter how often you visit the site (if you visit 5% of your time online, then there was a 5% chance it would pop up here). Looking at the information on the spyware, it appears that there is a 3 day "Trial Period" and then the pop-ups come hard and fast. If so, you were infected 3 days prior. It also looks like they (Movieland) are being taken to court over drive-by downloads.
Throw the jerks who create stuff like this into a pit with some angry dogs is my suggestion. If they manage to win, well - add more dogs.
My Dad's computer got this one, took me hours to root it out of his machine.
Quote from: Andrew on November 19, 2006, 09:53:20 PM
Throw the jerks who create stuff like this into a pit with some angry dogs is my suggestion. If they manage to win, well - add more dogs.
You forgot to wrap them in bacon first.
-Ed