hdood Posted March 2, 2010 Share Posted March 2, 2010 You are so wrong my friend it's not even funny He's not that wrong. Unless your browser or an add-on (like Flash) it is running has a known vulnerability, it is 100% impossible to magically get infected. These are very rare, but then there are still people out there using IE5. When someone gets infected it's almost always because they took some action to infect themselves, even when they deny it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rudy Posted March 2, 2010 Share Posted March 2, 2010 He's not that wrong. Unless your browser or an add-on (like Flash) it is running has a known vulnerability, it is 100% impossible to magically get infected. These are very rare, but then there are still people out there using IE5. When someone gets infected it's almost always because they took some action to infect themselves, even when they deny it. There are still a few 0-day attacks every once in a while... and sometimes some users might not patch everything right away Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kudos Veteran Posted March 2, 2010 Veteran Share Posted March 2, 2010 He's not that wrong. Unless your browser or an add-on (like Flash) it is running has a known or unknown vulnerability, it is 100% impossible to magically get infected. These are very rare, but then there are still people out there using IE5. When someone gets infected it's almost always because they took some action to infect themselves, even when they deny it. Fixed it for you (I basically made your sentence worthless as a result). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Growled Member Posted March 2, 2010 Member Share Posted March 2, 2010 *sighs* from relief I'm very fortunate then. Me too. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted March 2, 2010 Share Posted March 2, 2010 Fixed it for you (I basically made your sentence worthless as a result). You're right, it should have said discovered vulnerability, since known tends to mean disclosed in that context. Sorry. Most exploits are based on disclosed vulnerabilities though, and in the few cases where they aren't, they are documented within hours of being spotted in the wild. The point I was poorly making is that these are very rare (but like I said, do exist, especially on systems that are rarely updated) and that infections usually got there by other means. There is good reason to be skeptical of the claim that 2/3 of his computers got infected just because he clicked an image (an area where bugs are exceptionally rare these days). I also haven't heard of any recent vulnerabilities in image renderers. The "at least one" is questionable as well. The likelihood of several unrelated threads having the exact same exploit probably approaches zero. Chances are there is more to the story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*RedBull* Posted March 3, 2010 Author Share Posted March 3, 2010 This has nothing to do with our site. I'd suggest creating a thread on your issue. As the OP, nobody else has reported this issue. Which leads me to believe this also unrelated to our site. If you were infected via a link posted in the Jokes forum, many others including staff would have been as well. We'd be hearing a lot more about it, and all our virus scanners would be going nutty. They aren't. However, if you could provide a history of the links/threads you viewed in the Jokes area, we can review them to be sure. Honestly, it's not a false positve. It was a link posted in the jokes thread. There are those who would pose as regular members and make links then insult those who try to warn others. I'm dead serious my AV found the same keylogger on three separate machines that had browsed Neowin jokes forum in the last two weeks. Actually yes you can get infected these days just by visiting an infected site, even without clicking anything. It happened to my mother recently with Firefox 3.6 with Adblock Plus installed and my custom filters. All she did was go to http://www.seattlepi.com/ from her bookmarks and before she could click anything else, one of those fake anti-spyware apps popped up. And no her system was not infected before that. As I stated malware can be hidden with pictures when you download or simply view them. Clicking on a link can transmit malware as well. That fake antispyware popup is a very good example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomwarren Veteran Posted March 3, 2010 Veteran Share Posted March 3, 2010 As we stated before, if you can provide the link or evidence for this then please do otherwise it's nothing more than scaremongering as we have had no reports from other users. Please PM me the link to the thread in question and I'll investigate. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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