malware attack through the orchid board?

[RJSquirrel]

I'm getting the alert when I log on here..that a virus/malware attack was stopped and take notice..but I haven't had any problems with my computer,,oh its not my computer its a work comp


no telling what it is as I don't ever get these messages and now I'm kind of curious

[Royal]

I got hit by something Firday morning. NOT fun.

[Bird Song Farm]

I have had the "white sheet" come up on two different occasions. Both when I clicked an e-mail notification of new post to a specific forum.
Fortunately my anti-virus program caught the problem.
Attention Face Book users........be careful about clicking links. I had to completely reformat my hard drive when I hit a page from a Face Book link. It even by-passed my anti-virus program!

Needless to say, I'm no longer on Face Book.
Al

[RosieC]

I've not had any more reports of this from my virus checker since updating Java as per Prem's instructions above. If anyone is still getting them I would strongly recomend doing this, as it appears to be something that tries to take advantage of a Java security loophole.

[DebsC]

My computer took a hit last week from the OB homepage? After 4 days in the shop and several dollars, it's back up and running with a new anti virus program and a new OS. A trojan wiped out everything.

Before I was even able to log in, I was warned that OB was an unsafe site. The header was just a bunch of jibberish.

I closed out the site and came back later with no problems and no problems this evening.

[susiep]

Is it possible to have a virus/trojan without these 'symptoms'? I have not had any warnings from my antivirus (McAfee). I am OB several times every day.

[Marty]

Can you guys email or post a screen capture when the 'attack' occurs. The only thing I can pin this on is the OpenX ad service...but I run that on my other forums with no ill effects

[RosieC]

Marty, is the OpenX also the thing that the Google Adds go through, or is it just the forum sponsors that go through that?

Susan, I think if you have an up to date copy of Java (which may be auto-updating on your system) then it does not even manage to get in at all so your virus checker would not have seen it. I think if you had got something you would know about it.

Always make sure your virus checker is up to date and that you apply the security patches for things like IE, Java, Adobe etc... these security patches block the loopholes which the virus writers have made use of. Of course there is always the situation where a virus is so new the virus checkers and security patches have not caught up yet, but they usually do catch up very quickly after a virus is identified world wide.

[Marty]

OpenX serves sponsor ads...however, it's a multi million dollar company...as soon as there would be a security issue, they would have been all over it...esp on their hosted service, which we use. I also use their service on other forums, with no issues. Google would not be serving malware for sure, neither would facebook. If we really had malware on OB code, then this would affect everyone, not just few....this is bizzare

[RosieC]

I agree that if this was something on OB code then it would be happening far more regularly and constantly than it is. For that reason I am convinced that OB it's self is clean.

I think that both Google and Facebook CAN be prone to viruses as can OpenX but as you have said about OpenX they would usually be all over it very quickly and it would be cleared up very quickly. As someone said above these very big companies become targets and because soooo many web pages go through their links one of those can easily become infected and it takes time before it is stopped (although I would expect it to be stopped pretty quickly).

I know for sure that Google use Sophos for Anti-virus and I also know for sure that Sophos had a change to the signature for this virus on the same day I got the attack. Basically then I would expect a vulnerability in the time it takes between the virus changing, Sophos updating, Google getting the update and the update rechecking EVERYTHING Google services as adds. I think that would happen pretty quickly but there IS still a time of vulnerability.