Forum Archive
Historical Topic: This discussion is from 2006. For current info, check out our updated guides.

I think there is a Virus in one of these posts

Started November 13, 2006 · 9,273 views · 7 posts
Careful people. The only site I visited regularly Sunday night while working was this one and CNN, and somehow managed to pick up a Trojan Virus called linkoptimizer that took 4 hours to clean out of my computer. I think I must have opened the wrong link that somebody has posted on this board. (Or it could be from the CNN site) There is a free removal tool at the symantec.ca website that you can download and then use to clean your computer.

This is what symantec (Norton) says about this virus.

\"New distribution domains were added to the list because gromozon dot com gained too much bad publicity! (Check out our updated Trojan.Linkoptimizer writeup for a list of the dangerous domains.)
- New obfuscated JavaScript with recent exploits are now used to install the Trojan. (Linkoptimizer just couldn’t ignore the latest Internet Explorer exploits for VML and WebFolderIcon components.)
- The downloaded file is no longer named www dot google dot com and is created from a random list (e.g..www dot free dot com, www dot super dot com, www dot auto dot com). It sure as hell was named www dot google dot com for me tonight.

Figure 1
The infection starts from the very bottom layer with a spammed email that contains real news or an advertisement together with a link, which leads to a random Web page, hosted on www dot geocities dot com.

Figure 2
The infection may also spread through public forums, bulletin boards, and guestbooks, where the distributors of Linkoptimizer have injected several malicious links. We recommend that you do not underestimate the risks of this type of attack, since it has proven to be extremely efficient in the distribution of the Trojan. For example, many users get infected simply by searching Google for legitimate Italian words, such as \"stampanti A3 getto\" (translation: printers A3 jet). Since many malicious links are embedded in legitimate Web pages, search results may often lead to a Linkoptimizer-infected Web site (as shown in Figure 3).
Advertisement

Planning your trip?

Explore our comprehensive travel guide for up-to-date info on Puerto Vallarta.

View Travel Guide
Virus
Ronald , did you open that link posted by Bryan9000 in the restaurant section in the getting to the bottom of naturism thread ? I have a really bad feeling that could be the infection source .
bad food at one of the resturants infected the website... never know, anything is possible... sorry for the virus ronald... will have to go out to norton and get the latest updates and do a full scan and update of my pc as well... please be careful everybody....
protect yourself

http://i10.tinypic.com/402vmgp.jpg" alt="User image" loading="lazy">
AVG?
I also recently starting using AVG. So far so good.
online trojan scan

http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/trojanscan.asp

online virus scan

http://update1.globalhauri.com/Custom/LiveSuite/BCI/livecall/eng/livecall.html

these two are great
i use them once a week

get avg installed to your pc
for virus

also get zone alarm for firewall protection (disable xp firewall first)

norton is obsolete
was good back in the hay days