Phishing screen freezes Firefox
Using Firefox, my cursor opened this link [I have removed the htt to make it dead] and my Firefox froze. It displayed an obvious phishing screen telling me to call 'Microsoft'
ps://enhypostatize.xyz/en/?search=%FD6%24%FC%81%9BMC%D9%B2%01%EF%D1gN%EE%89~u%5E&list=200000#0
So, I rebooted since I couldn't close FF. Opened FF again. It brought up the same link and froze again. Used Edge to google tips, opened FF in FF safe mode, and that lost the links.
Reopened FF and viewed history where I found the bad link many times. Removed it from history.
So my questions are these?
It seems this bad link works by making a search run in a loop, effectively freezing your browser. Is that right?
and...
Is there a better way to solve the problem than what I did?
Chosen solution
A lot of times, those types of popups will lock up Firefox either by running an infinite loop (like you said) or by constantly opening alerts and prompts.
It sounds like the link probably came up again when you opened Firefox a second time because Firefox is trying to recover pages from a crash, which is another reason why the scammers may try to crash the browser, so that it constantly comes up.
It sounds like you've done everything right. Glad that you didn't fall for the scam, like so many other people do.
The only other thing I would recommend at the moment is to run a scan of your computer to make sure that the popup didn't manage to install any malware on your system and to make sure that the popup wasn't opened by malware that's already on your system.
You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:
- Microsoft Safety Scanner
- MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware
- Anti-Rootkit Utility - TDSSKiller (for more info, see this alternate TDSSKiller download page)
- AdwCleaner (for more info, see this alternate AdwCleaner download page)
- Hitman Pro
- ESET Online Scanner
Also, I'd obviously recommend avoiding the website that opened the popup to begin with, if you know which one was the cause.
Hope this helps.
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Chosen Solution
A lot of times, those types of popups will lock up Firefox either by running an infinite loop (like you said) or by constantly opening alerts and prompts.
It sounds like the link probably came up again when you opened Firefox a second time because Firefox is trying to recover pages from a crash, which is another reason why the scammers may try to crash the browser, so that it constantly comes up.
It sounds like you've done everything right. Glad that you didn't fall for the scam, like so many other people do.
The only other thing I would recommend at the moment is to run a scan of your computer to make sure that the popup didn't manage to install any malware on your system and to make sure that the popup wasn't opened by malware that's already on your system.
You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:
- Microsoft Safety Scanner
- MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware
- Anti-Rootkit Utility - TDSSKiller (for more info, see this alternate TDSSKiller download page)
- AdwCleaner (for more info, see this alternate AdwCleaner download page)
- Hitman Pro
- ESET Online Scanner
Also, I'd obviously recommend avoiding the website that opened the popup to begin with, if you know which one was the cause.
Hope this helps.
Thank you. I did run Malwarebytes first thing. Came up clean, which made me suspect it was targeting the browser.