Sunday, June 20, 2010

Google Search hi-jack

Starting this morning, whenever I search using Google search engine in an IE 7 browser, I get taken to an adverisement hosted by adwords.onlinesecuregroup.com no matter what I click.  This doesn't effect chrome.

So more malware.  It doesn't seem to do anything worse than that so far.  Here's a related post I found about this search engine redirect problem on bleepingcomputer.com

www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic322477.htm

Will research and resolve tomorrow.  This is not my primary computer, so it isn't updated with IE8 and obviously isn't very secure because I store everything important elsewhere.

For casual computer users:  Installing Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari all installed while things are working properly is helpful loaded for times like this.  Most problems do not effect all four browsers and IE and Firefox are more likely to be targeted as they are still more widely used.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Wmpxk3.exe

New malware popped up in the office this morning.  It came over pidgeon as an instant message to our user from a person that we believe is using yahoo messenger.  A link popped up to a "party pic" zip file, coming from a url with "picturesharehost" in the name.  We have the full link still, but how about I don't post it here and cause it to proliferate?  The domain is hosted in France.

A pop-up asked the user to download something to protect her computer. The user just Xed out of that, but still noticed her computer was behaving oddly.  Thus the call to the IT department.  We searched and found that wmpxk3.exe in the startup directory.

It didn't change the background, and didn't effect browsing.
We simply deleted that file and rebooted.  Everything seems fine for now.

Will update this post if we get more information.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Just when I thought I couldn't get enough Caffeine...

Leave it to Google. Not only do they produce some of the most efficient software out there, now they're naming their technologies after things close to my heart (literally).

Of course there's a downside: Now when my disgruntled ex-girlfriend posts naked pictures of me it'll be on the Internet faster than you can say "Wow, that was a really bad idea."

Google Caffeine!