Winfixer Attack!
First, a quick happy birthday to dancing_kiralee!
And now...my system was just attacked by something called Winfixer2005. To be honest, I'm not sure what happened. But what made it most disturbing is that I had actually updated and ran my full suite of protection software in the last five hours - that is, before my system got infected. My browser was open - FireFox - and I was trying to vote for my site on the "Top 25" poll when suddenly things slowed down and got weird. All of a sudden popups appeared like crazy, including some full-screen ones, telling me that my registry had been compromised and I needed to buy Winfixer 2005 right away.
I tried to close the popups but, but that just opened new ones. So I went into Task Manager and tried to close the single Winfixer page that was displayed. The response was that the program was waiting for a response from me. Nonetheless I closed it, and immediately ran a full system scan - Ad-Aware and Antivir. Neither reported any problem.
I just did a little research, and it looks as if I may have dodged the bullet - I don't think Winfixer 2005 installed, it was just trying to install. I've shut down and restarted, and haven't got the popups that are the sign of Winfixer. I've tried using both IE and FireFox, still nothing. But this is apparently a very virulent exploit or virus. It makes popups appear even when your browser isn't open. So, word to the wise, watch out.
And now...my system was just attacked by something called Winfixer2005. To be honest, I'm not sure what happened. But what made it most disturbing is that I had actually updated and ran my full suite of protection software in the last five hours - that is, before my system got infected. My browser was open - FireFox - and I was trying to vote for my site on the "Top 25" poll when suddenly things slowed down and got weird. All of a sudden popups appeared like crazy, including some full-screen ones, telling me that my registry had been compromised and I needed to buy Winfixer 2005 right away.
I tried to close the popups but, but that just opened new ones. So I went into Task Manager and tried to close the single Winfixer page that was displayed. The response was that the program was waiting for a response from me. Nonetheless I closed it, and immediately ran a full system scan - Ad-Aware and Antivir. Neither reported any problem.
I just did a little research, and it looks as if I may have dodged the bullet - I don't think Winfixer 2005 installed, it was just trying to install. I've shut down and restarted, and haven't got the popups that are the sign of Winfixer. I've tried using both IE and FireFox, still nothing. But this is apparently a very virulent exploit or virus. It makes popups appear even when your browser isn't open. So, word to the wise, watch out.