49 replies to this topic

[+remixedcat]

Glassed Silver, on 31 December 2012 - 01:38, said:

Use a condom?

Glassed Silver:mac

Best solution!!!!

[rippleman]

actual real porn sites do not have viruses, they make more money from repeat subscriptions of $30+ a month. But porn warez/torrent/tube sites sites can easily have them. If they do not actually put the malware on their site, the advertising services they use can occasionally get injected with them. The only way to 100% always be safe is surf porn from a sand boxed environment, or a virtual machine. Its not unnecessary and overkill but if you want 100% safe its what you have to do.

[GarakObama]

Enable the click_to_play option for Firefox in about:config.

[TPreston]

Another thing to watch is windows media players automatically download codecs option (only group policy object for wmp)

[DirtyLarry]

HoochieMamma, on 31 December 2012 - 01:41, said:

^This

Also....Friend....sure...

It honestly is. As I said, I do all of my browsing, and always have, and a Mac based computer. Typing this from a Macbook Pro. I would 1) totally admit if it was me 2) would never be in such a situation to begin with.

Brando212, on 31 December 2012 - 01:37, said:

for firefox the two biggies would be Adblock Plus and NoScript

nice, I will suggest this first as it sounds like the simplest approach.

Jan, on 31 December 2012 - 02:33, said:

Couldn't he use Metro IE to view pron instead?

Would this help? If so I am sure he would use it upon my suggestion.

Thanks in advanced to everyone else. As I said, I was also not sure if it was all just a myth, and others have pointed out this is indeed a good possibility. It could be he did not get this from visiting porn related sites, but it is the only real "strange" thing he does on the computer.

Thanks again to everyone who has helped out so far.

[roguekiller23231]

best thing to do is have an up to date virus scanner and do a malware scan once in a while. every site can get infected from time to time, it would also depend on if you are using one or particular sites all the time, or using google to search around for what you wanted, using many sites would be more likely that you come across one that is going to infect your machine.

if you dont have a malware/spyware scanner

Malwarebytes
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

[Deranged]

DirtyLarry, on 31 December 2012 - 03:36, said:

Would this help? If so I am sure he would use it upon my suggestion.

WinRT apps are sandboxed and Flash in WinRT IE is locked to trusted sites...I'm sure it would help.

I don't know how my brother still gets infected, but I'm pretty sure it'll happen again.

[pickypg]

DirtyLarry, on 31 December 2012 - 01:35, said:

Okay, I ask this as I truly do not know. For starters, I have always done all of my devious internet excursions using a Macintosh. But not kidding, that is the truth.

So a friend of mine who shall remain nameless, was having all sorts of issues with his fairly new install of Windows 8 this past weekend.
After running a Virus Scan, which he has a full working copy of ESET Nod32, turns out 3 things were detected, they were eventually removed, and for now, all seems normal. I was unable to see what was detected and removed, he told me about this all after the fact. So not even sure what was found. But he was having some weird issues for sure.

So what can he do to prevent anything like this happening in the future? Can one even really get viruses from visiting adult related sites? Or is that a myth within itself? I am pretty sure it is not, but I honestly do not know, so trying to help my friend avoid any such issues in the future.

So are there any specific apps he can use? Any specific settings to enable in Firefox (that is his browser of choice).

Any help is truly appreciated.

He should probably start using Chrome over Firefox for at least his porn surfing, because it has a sandbox, and have AdBlock installed as well as FlashControl (blocks all Flash content, and it allows in-page enabling, as well as whitelisting for trusted sites, like YouTube). Also, as others have mentioned, uninstall Java, or at least disable it.

The largest source of drive-by viruses are through hacked, low-end ad servers (ads may start from a tier one provider, but they may have nothing to "serve" the visitor, so they will pass the request to a third party, which may have been hacked) that end up getting used for low end ads, and most of these come from Flash. By blocking Flash content, excepting perhaps the *ah-hem* videos, then he will avoid the vast majority of those types of viruses. If he's downloading and running stuff, then there is nothing that can save him; he will get viruses.

Having FlashControl alone will also lead to improved battery life on laptops from the stupid Flash-based ads that just love to suck up CPU and even the GPU in some cases.

[Xoligy]

I admit i check out the sites now and again for a free viewing and its hard to tell if its the site your on, some dodgy add that pops up or as mentioned before some image that has some bad code hidden in it (ive had warnings saying such and such an image is dangerous but i believe its the site address being flagged).

Anyway here is what i use and dont seem to have any issues:
Chrome
Kaspersky
Adblock Plus
AdMuncher (Premium adblocker)

I do "sometimes" scan for malware and what not using malwarebytes and i probably do that more than a virus scan lol (maybe once every 2-3months sometimes longer)

Things ive tried:
Flash Block - Found annoying
Noscript - Sounds good and can do a good job but can be annoying to set up and configure so it works correctly with sites i normally ended up just disabling it

[pickypg]

Xoligy, on 31 December 2012 - 06:14, said:

Flash Block - Found annoying

I found the various Flash blockers to be quite terrible until I came across FlashControl. It's quite unobtrusive and it works pretty quickly.

[mattmatik]

Chrome + AdBlock + Flash Block for me. Never had problems.

I use Malwarebytes quick scan daily and full scan once a week along with MSE.

[+warwagon]

roguekiller23231, on 31 December 2012 - 03:59, said:

best thing to do is have an up to date virus scanner and do a malware scan once in a while. every site can get infected from time to time, it would also depend on if you are using one or particular sites all the time, or using google to search around for what you wanted, using many sites would be more likely that you come across one that is going to infect your machine.

if you dont have a malware/spyware scanner

Malwarebytes
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

While it is a good idea to do a virus scan from time to time, that is not the end all. Personally I should hope my AV NEVER picks something up. Not because I want an AV that sucks, but because I hope it doesn't find malware on my system simply because I don't have any. I would focus really hard at keeping java off the system and windows / 3rd party software updated. Sure you can still get infected, but now it's of your stupidity running a file rather than getting nuked from an exploit / drive by download.

[+Crisp]

+1 for ABP.

Anyone who uses FireFox should have this installed by default.

[Detection]

I suppose any site could be an attack site, even genuine clean sites are targeted and infected so that the next time someone visits that site, they will become infected

Adult sites sound likely though, warez/crack/keygen sites too

[DirtyLarry]

Deranged, on 31 December 2012 - 04:15, said:

WinRT apps are sandboxed and Flash in WinRT IE is locked to trusted sites...I'm sure it would help.

I don't know how my brother still gets infected, but I'm pretty sure it'll happen again.

Nice I did not know that, I installed Win 8 on a partition on my comp, but I keep falling back to 7. I only use my Windows PC for gaming and streaming, so I do not use it much these days. That is definitely a great reason to suggest using it.

I verified with him, he did not install a single .exe, so it had to somehow be the ads from pron sites it sounds like.

So disabling Java, does anyone know if the Zune player relies on it at all? My friend is also one of the last people on earth who uses a Zune (I have offered him a FREE iPod, he has not taken it), so just want to make sure if disabling Java completely would interfere with that. I know I use Java on my machine for PS3 Media Server, so I have to admit disabling Java seems a little extreme to me as I feel it has its uses, but if it really will help stop all of this, I will un-install it.

See, I am my friends default tech support, which is ironic as you can all probably tell, I am not a Windows oriented user whatsoever, I know how to keep Windows running to play games and not much else (okay maybe a little more, but I am not on the level of people here who do it for a living, not even close), so anything I can do to make my life easier, I am all for it.

Thanks again to everyone for all the different responses and help. I had a feeling I would grab peoples attention with the subject title, but I also knew more people than care to admit probably have had dealings with such sites.