Photobucket Virus Issues?

[WeatherLovingDoc]

Another large blog I participate in sent out a moderator warning today that Photobucket is experiencing virus issues. Sources are reporting the following information:

Clicking into your photobucket account will start a rogue program, antispywareprolivescan, which will attempt to not only scan your computer but also download and install a rogue virus Antispyware 2009.

Apparently Photobucket itself has not put anything on it's site as yet regarding this problem.

I don't know how to contact the moderators here, so thought I would post this information. Should they wish to delete this post and give their own instructions etc.., please feel free.

Just wish to get this information out there for your consideration and suggestions.

Best,
WLD

edited by vbhoutex to sticky

[WeatherLovingDoc]

More information on this:

The virus is intentionally planted as a "trojan" as a marketing scam and brings in a package that locks up the computer until you buy their antispy-ware and anti-virus program. But by then the files are corrupted.

It came in on "URL" from Photobucket - name seems to be "Rogue-AntiSpyware Security 2010" and rogue "Antispyware Internet Security 2010." with three layers of Trojans (fake alert); Generic and Proxy agent.

Curiously, I had this problem last month with our family computer but we think it came through Facebook (with pictures our kids view, hmm). Our guy put the following on which has helped tremendously (free download, and not connected with them,lol):

http://www.superantispyware.com/

[breeze]

Super Anti-Spyware is a great program - I run it on my PC several times a week. It's not a big
program, and runs quickly and efficiently on my 4-yr.old computer.

[coriolis]

I never heard of Super Anti-Spyware before. I would have guessed it was one of those rogue programs! Anyway, whatever system you use as primary defense, you should always have a second layer of defense. No program is 100% effective, but with two, the odds become much better in your favor. I use Vipre Anti-virus/Anti-spyware to run continuously in the background as active protection. This product uses a very small amount of resources, so it doesn't slow the computer down any. I have it configured to do a deep scan every night. Then about once a week I run spybot or ad-aware just to mix things up. This procedure seems to be holding up to a lot of hard and sometimes questionable use by teenagers and their friends. Oh - and my best defense: My computer is locked and passworded. I let the kids use "their" computers. I recommend having some other tools already loaded on your computer and ready to go. When you have a virus is no time to be searching the internet and trying to load rescue software. I have Adaware, Spybot, HijackThis, and SDfix loaded on all our computers just in case.

[profitgs]

The virus on Photobucket, or others very much like it, have been "caught" on a lot of other sites as well, including FaceBook, MySpace, and Guitartabs.

It is believed that it was in the ads on these sites. The sites themselves were not "hacked", it was the ads that were dangerous.

MalwareBytes.org has a free download for an anti-malware program (malwarebytes) that is very effective at getting rid of these rogue "anti-virus" viruses, and a lot of others. If you download this program, and keep it updated (they update their malware database multiple times a day), then you will be well-prepared to deal with an attack if it happens again. Also, since the viruses/malware appear to be in the ads, you should consider using FireFox with the No Script Add-on, because it blocks the ads completely. This allows you to go to PhotoBucket without any of the ads working. It's a major pain, because none of the Java or Flash scripts will work on any website until/unless you explicitly allow them. But, it is safer.