Weird spam links on the index page

[Kodemaster]

Hi Mods,

I don't know if you know this, but if you scroll down to the very bottom of the landing page of www.astralpulse.com (http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/index.html) you will find links to advertisements, written in very light grey against the white background:

Dieting Product South Beach Diet Muscle Gaining Gain Muscle Muscle Gain Tips

[Nagual]

Maybe related to...

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/12/21/santy_worm_spreads_through_phpbb_forums.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/12/18/php_exploit_enables_theft_of_phpbb_passwords.html

[You]

Eww I read about that virus elsewhere, sounds nasty, I hope that's all it does.

[clandestino]

thanks Kodemaster for pointing this out ! I'm not the most computer-savvy person around here, but I believe that Adrian & EOL007 will know whether or not any action needs to be taken.

Kind regards,
Mark

[James S]

Er...nope! Sorry Jeni, not seing them.

A few thoughts here though.....

I've recently been working on more than just a couple of PCs and laptops that have been well and truly hijacked by trojans, including my own PC.

What you've mentioned here sounds like your PC has been got at by a trojan, possibly something called a BHO - Browser Helper Object.

I've built up a collection of free tools that have so far nailed every last one of the buggers, so I'll rattle off a list of things you might want to use to give your PC a good going over. You'll need several, because no one anti-virus or anti-spyware program alone will handle everything, despite what they might claim.

Firstly, if you're running Windows 2000 or XP, make sure you've got the latest updates from microsoft. One was recently released that specifically stops a nasty hijacker related to something called CoolSearch.

Get youself the following batch of free or trial programs, and make sure you also get their updates.:
Adaware - at this point in time its doing a better job than spybot at removing spyware, but you might want to get spybot as well just to be sure.

Trojan Hunter - excellent, posibly the best anti-trojan utility. It's a limited time trial, but fully functional in that time.

BHO Demon - displays all Browser Helpers and tells you if any are sus.

Hijack This - brilliant program that displays all registry keys associated with startup programs or processes, and anything that might be associating with your web browser. You need to be fairly familiar with how this one works, but there are some good guides on using it on the web.

Win Patrol - lets you look at all the processes you've got running, browser helpers, startup files, etc. It also can load into your system tray on startup and alert you if any program tries to make unwanted changes to your configuration.

Lastly - the virus scanner. Unless you've got one of the really thorough scanners like Nortons, go to www.trendmicro.com and run their free online scanner. It's a very good one!

If you do find you'ev got viruses or other nasties on your PC, don't just run these utilities once. Run them a few times, rebooting in between each series of checks, just to make sure something isn't rebuilding itsself on reboot.

Once your done with them, you can remove the programs from your PC if you wish. Some of these double up on what they do, and if your'r enot using them to nail something specific, they can get a bit annoying.

Now, if you're one of the lucky people who use one of Apple's super grunty little numbers, ignore everything I've just said - they don't easily get infected at all. Most script kiddies writing viruses are out to get Microsoft.

Good luck,
James.

[paker7]

Hi James

Go again to the index page, hit ctrl+f and search for this string:

Dieting Product South Beach Diet Muscle Gaining Gain Muscle Muscle Gain Tips

My computer is 100% virus/trojan free.

ps. It is possible that someone used mod_rewrite to hide these links from your view.

[James S]

Yup, you're right!

Got confirmation from Adrian that the advertising is there, and pretty much meant to be, but he assures that the advertising is completely above board and safe. Something to do with an agreement with the people who host the server

So I guess the last post was largely useless, unless of course you do have concerns about being infected.

Sorry for going off half cocked there.

Regards,
James.