Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I'm hoping this doesn't make anybody think they have to stay away from serious eats. I didn't actually end up with a problem. But I thought I'd better alert people not to download that program if it happens to them. I'm hoping somebody knows a great deal more about this kind of thing than I do.

That's been happening to me also. I just ran my Norton Semantic to be sure and didn't click on what popped up.

@dhorst - do you mean it happened while you were on serious eats?

@Jerzee tomato - do you mean this is actually some kind of ad??

it just happened to me! i just clicked my way out of it and here i am!
hope i don't have a virus.

The SAME THING happened to me a week or two ago--I did a 'system restore' which essentially wipes the computer clean after a certain date--I system restored back to August 20th, updated Windows and Antivirus and didn't have problems afterward, but until I did that, I kept getting those pop-up screens.

What you are talking about is Malware--a teaser that encourages you to download a rogue program by convincing you you have a virus.

It is a pop up.

It's probably just some annoying pop up ad.

I don't see them (on a Mac using Firefox).

@lemonfair--it has just happened here at SE. It's saying my computer is at risk and looks like my screen and warns of different viruses and trojan horses. It's saying something like Virus Doctor or something similar. Hopefully the team will be able to take care of it soon. The folks here at SE are pretty terrific.

This is a virus/malware item that's been going around for quite some time. The problem is that it updates itself faster than most of the "anti" programs can keep up with, and every time there's a major update, a whole lot of people get infected. Because there has to be the virus in the wild before the "anti" people can come up with the detection algorithms.

And once it has infected a computer, it's smart enough to shut down the major "anti" programs. They look like they're running, but they pretty much get neutered.

I doubt it's coming from SE itself. Just being online is enough. One of the last times it ran amok, people thought they were installing a Java update when they got popups that seemed to come from the websites they were visiting. But it wasn't on any of those websites, and it had nothing to do with java.

I haven't seen this particular bug for a while, so I guess it's about time it comes back around again. I guess I'll be busy next week...sigh...

@Neil, I've also seen the same bug redirect users to sites that look the intended one, but with with added content/links. The most interesting was a Google clone. It could happen to any site, including SE.

@neil: I was too flustered to write down what it offered, unfortunately. There was the word "green" in the exe file, and there was also something like "trusteddownload.info" That's not it exactly. I googled the phrase it offered, and when I google "trusteddownload" this morning I get something different. But last night when I googled " [trust]download.info" a few dot com references came up that looked like they might be legit, and that were options in the google search. But this was definitely a dot info link, which I'd never heard of.

No, I didn't get the fake virus scan, like the NYTimes had. My total screen was replaced (the URL was no longer serious eats) by an enlarged screen that looked approximately like the "my computer" screen, with shared documents, my documents, local disc on it, and the left hand menu, as well. Under shared documents in red letters it said I had 8 viruses, under my documents it said I had 2 viruses, etc. The second time it ran yesterday the number of viruses it told me I had was different.

It had a "warning" message, and when I tried to close out the screen a box popped up that told me my computer could crash if I didn't choose the option to download the .info thing. This was after I had initially proceeded to a second screen, so I may have gotten malware. I'll go to the malwarebytes.org site. I haven't had any trouble since this though (in fact for some reason things are running better. I run my avg through a complete scan about 3 times a week, so it shouldn't be that). I haven't gotten any pop up ads.

@Neil: This morning my avg shows two threats, which must be from the 2 instances yesterday, and it must be that avg has now caught up with them and hadn't yesterday. It's a trojan horse, and the line about it on my scan is:

...localsettings/Temp/KkPk7v...Trojanhorse.downloader.Generic8.BLOQ

Hope that helps. (The scan hasn't finished running yet. If I find out more I'll let you know)

@lemonfair, the mbam-setup.exe is the correct setup file for that program. Download it, install it, and then update it until there are no more updates available. Sometimes there are as many as three updates before it's finished.

The default is to run the shorter scan, but the complete scan is (obviously) more thorough. But it takes a looooong time. Very long...And if it finds anything, particularly if it tells you a reboot is necessary, it's a good idea to run the scan again. Often, it picks up things on the second scan that it didn't find in the first. What I normally do on an infected computer is to run the program until the last scan says that nothing is left.

Over the next few days, it's not a bad idea to run another update (they update the signatures often) and run the full scan again, just to clean out anything that the new updates find.

I havent experienced anything remotely similar.

MIND YOU: I'm a mac user. Always will be.
Apple ~4~ Life

Yes that happened to me as well...and only while on this site......I just clicked on the "x's" to get out of the screen..I thought it was some type of "pop-up" add...