Was I just attacked by a hacker?
While I was reading a news article on washingtonpost.com, the web page disappeared and a new page appeared that said it was Firefox performing a security scan, then it said, "your security download is ready" and told me to click here. I became suspicious because I have never seen or heard of Firefox do this in all the years I have used it, and also because the URL did not say mozilla or firefox. Rather than click as instructed, I cancelled and closed that page.
Was this some sort of hacker attack?
Všechny odpovědi (2)
Firefox doesn't do "security scans". I don't know what that is called, but it is good that you didn't click as instructed. You did right by closing the window.
If you get a pop-up message asking to update Firefox or plugins or scanning for malware then such a message is likely a scam and you should never respond to such an alert to avoid getting infected with malware.
- Only update Firefox via "Help > About" or by downloading and installing Firefox from the Mozilla server and never via a pop-up or link on a web page.
- Plugins should only be updated via the plugin itself or by visiting the home page of the plugin.
Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - AdwCleaner:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml - SuperAntispyware:
http://www.superantispyware.com/ - Microsoft Safety Scanner:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Windows Defender:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender - Spybot Search & Destroy:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Kasperky Free Security Scan:
http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
- Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked