Attention Forum Owners (gene Etc)

[Eddie]

every second time I either refresh the page or return from another page the top banner becomes a ad for a porno site or something. Its not my pc, we did a full virus check and adware scan on my pc, so the problem must be with the site. Can you look into that please? As much as I like seing the hot sexy chick in the banner, I dont think its the right place :cool:

[@PLUGO]

we're looking into it...

um . . . thanks.

[Ou Ji]

Has to be your PC Eddie. I haven't seen any non-MA ads in the banner. And I just spent the last few minutes refreshing my screen because you said teh chick was hot and sexy. :-)

[JamesC]

No porn here.

All i'm getting is the Spin Kick Target (which I now HATE with the passion of a thousand suns) and the Martial Arts Museum.

[GeneChing]

Like DS said, we're looking into it, but we haven't found anything yet. It may just be a South Africa thing.

Anyone else experiencing this?

[David Jamieson]

nope, no anomolies here.

you may want to check your browser settings there.

also, contact your isp. The array of images is hardcoded basically and those banners are pulled from a directory and rotated according to java variable arguments.

If someone clever enough compromises a particular node of the network you're on, then you'll get freaky stuff like that happening.

also, you could have a worm that has no def file for it yet and will look for banner rotation scripts and source the images from elsewhere.

usually, this is due to you surfing a porn site, or someone surfing a porn site on your system and then having that little app placed into your system.

anyway, there's a bajillion possibilities I guess, but by looking at the source and css files for these pages, everything appears copasetic as far as the named banners in the array.

[Eddie]

I e-mailed my ISP to ask for help too, but as far as my pc goes, I did several virus scans and spyware scans, it does seem to be ok. Check this screen shot to see what I mean. The banner appears right on top next to your logo.

If the problem lies on my side, please let me know how to fix it.

I was hoping you would say its your Christmas gift to us…. :rolleyes:

The chick is hot..... my wife must think Im a pervert or something :cool:

[Eddie]

David, thanks for that info. This pc is the one in our kung fu school lounge, so it is open to students to play on. I checked the history, but when I did a virus check i cleared all the temp files and all the history files, so cause of my stupidity i cant see if someone surfed porn sites or not. do you know how to get rid of that?
thanks
ed

[GeneChing]

Mostly, it's weird because it occurs in our banner space, although that's certainly possible for some kind of virus. We've had worse when our site has been hacked. Our IT ran a diagnostic and has yet to find anything. So far, you're the only one to report this, so we'll keep our eye on it, but at this point, we've got to assume it's something with your machine. Our ad banners are on a continual random rotation, so every time you refresh your screen, it should show a new banner ad. If that doesn't work, I don't know what to tell you.

Please keep us updated on this situation, Eddie. I hope you can find the source of the problem. We'll keep looking on our end too.

[Eddie]

cool. i will do that. now the whole world think im surfing porn :) you bet I will get to the bottom of this :cool: if only to clear my good name :rolleyes:

its passed midnight here, so i will have to wait till morning for my isp people to get back to me. will post it then. have a look at this screenshot. its an add for winfixer. this might be the problem. it doesnt to it to any other site, just this one

[David Jamieson]

another thing to keep in mind is that php forums (like anywhere else on the net) are never 100% secure from haks or exploits to the code.

Especially when they are a template type of code piece such as these jelsoft vbulletin forums, phpbb, yabb and several others just to name a few.

If the computer is open, or left on then the possibilities for how this came to be become vast and I can't even think of what exactly the source is. lol Not really my area of expertise but I know there are many clever and resourceful coders out there who will do this to get click through on affiliated sites they get paid for or just to try out some haxxors skeelz. :P

Routing out a worm can be hard.
There's a lot of places you have to dig into. And it depends on teh operating system.

You can start by going to http://www.auditmypc.com and seeing if there are any of the online tools there that you could use to have a look around.

If it's a windows xp box, hit ctrl+alt+del to open the task manager when you encounter an anomoly. Take a look at how many processes you have running and which ones. Many applications run as processes in xp and they are otherwise hidden to you. See if any of them look suspect. If you don't know what each process is, simply type in the name of it in google search and go look it up, you don't want to disable any processes that you need.



Delete the temporary internet files at the folder root instead of through the browser menus. Make sure they aren't in the recycle bin so empty that too.

If it's a virus scan issue, you can check out http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
See if any of the tools there can help you.

That's about all I can suggest Eddie. That and maybe make a guest account and leave the administrator account unaccessible to anyone who isn't authorized.

[Eddie]

thank you sir. I will follow all this and kep you posted. much appreciated

[Eddie]

thanks to you all, we ended up finding the problem. it was pretty much everything that David Jamison said. the problem was due to some virus that looked for certain banner advertising files on sites and then changed the adverts with the adverts for porn.

With help from a friend who is an IT security guy we managed to track down the bug and we could fix it. Still not completely fixed, but we should have it fixed by monday morning. We are still not sure how this got onto my pc, as this pc have good anti virus and anti spyware that gets updated regularly.

anyways, thanks for all the help, specially to David for giving my friend the hintswhere to look :-) thanks guys :cool: