PSA: BladeForums was NOT Compromised By A Virus, But...

Jaxx

Jaxx

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Joined
Jan 18, 2006
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19,790
...This is a good time for a reminder. Sometimes a program on your computer can have such a large security issue that your AV/firewall program may not stop an attack in time.

Some of y'all may remember my situation with Photobucket about 2 years back when they also had a virus problem stemming from some of their banner ads...

Please do yourselves a favor and make sure your programs are all updated, especially your Adobe programs, like Acrobat PDF reader... That's the one that I failed to update back then and that's the one that got compromised because I didn't keep it current, which led to one or more virus infections of my system. The exploit ran straight through my firewall and although I got a notice, by then it was too late to stop it. A lot of website banner ads run on Adobe software, making it easier to exploit the ones on your computer when some malicious a-hole finds a way in.
Surely there are other programs, but one easy way to check 'em all at once is Secunia PSI (secunia.com). Download the program, scan, and get latest updates. It's free for personal use.

BTW, Spark posted this message before reopening the site:

BladeForums VBulletin Message said:
BladeForums was NOT compromised
You may be seeing "Attack site messages" when coming to BFC. This is due to our third party advertiser allowing a malicious client to inject viruses into their market based banner program. As a result, when these ads were served by the third party service, a number of you got virus warnings. Google noticed the upswing in warnings and labeled our site as a possible malware threat. BladeForums.com servers were not at fault, and they have not been compromised.

We have removed the market-based third party banner advertising from the site and have notified Google to have them rescan for any malware. This being Sunday, we'll see when it happens

We're going to continue troubleshooting. If you encounter specific virus warnings (not a full page warning from google / mozilla firefox) please use the contact us link below and let us know.
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:):thumbup:
 
I also suggest running malwarebytes, a good antivirus program like avira, microsoft security essentials or avast, firefox with noscript and flashblock, making sure windows firewall is on or use a free one like comodo, and run spybot with immunizations. Also using a free vpn can help especially on public wifi networks.
 
what a mess that was/is.

Some folks are still having issues and even more are leery of getting back on especially when it is crashing work PC's
 
Thanks Jaxx. Good to hear that the problem was identified and dealt with. I'll be sure to check out secunia.
 
Fanglekai said:
I also suggest running malwarebytes, a good antivirus program like avira, microsoft security essentials or avast, firefox with noscript and flashblock, making sure windows firewall is on or use a free one like comodo, and run spybot with immunizations. Also using a free vpn can help especially on public wifi networks.
Click to expand...

Or.....

Use Linux or a MAC :-)
 
UDDwaine said:
Or.....

Use Linux or a MAC :-)
Click to expand...

You do realize linux distros and OS X aren't 100% secure, right? There are exploits for every operating system and if you think using ubuntu or tiger is going to keep you safe you really need to do some more research. Windows 7 is pretty secure on its own, but taking a few steps to increase security is worth the time.
 
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