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Viruses on websites

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by bc in arkansas

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I am a newly hired "Help Desk" support person, and am trying to write a "Safe Computing and Email Practices" guideline for our users, we are a small company around 100 users, and I could use a little help. Where I'm getting stuck is - the last 2 weeks we have had problems with 3 users getting the Backdoor.Autoupder virus, which supposedly comes from 2 infected websites. The users say they never visited these websites. I am trying to include in my guidelines the safety precautions for "safe internet browsing" and avoiding viruses through websites as well as email, but can't find much info on how you get infected through a compromised website, or how they actually contracted the virus in the first place if indeed they didn't visit the page by directly typing in the URL. Could they have gotten it through a banner ad or something like that? Is there a website that has any information on how you get a virus through a website instead of email attachments?

8 replies

by thechas

My virus scanner (McAfee) has flagged me a few times at web sites, so I know it is possible.

It this time, I would choose to assume that there are no limits on how a virus can get in.

While banner ads would be low on my list, pop-ups could be the source of your users problems.

Since Microsoft is the hackers favorite target, I would recommend using a lower profile browser.
Mozilla,
K-Meleon,
Opera

And, with their more compact code, they are less likely to have the gaping security holes that IE has.

All of the anti-virus software companies have pages of information on the route of infection for all of the "identified" viruses.

A good idea for any corporate setting would be to install ad-blocking, anti-pop-up, and spy-blocking software.

One option is the Proxomitron http://proxomitron.org/

Chas

by b_pope

I've visited many sites where Norton has opened to inform me it's detected a virus in my temperary internet files, when the web page tries to open. Your temp files are where the virus is coming in from, since all web pages load to your temp files. Are these three users deleting their temp files to cover their tracks. Alter their profiles so they don't have access to their temps.

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