Soxtalk Hosting Virus / Worm / Malware

[BlackBetsy]

Three times in the last week, I have come to Soxtalk.com and gotten a virus/worm/trojan. If you guys know anything about this, you need to get it fixed. I think it has something to do with your advertiser, 180. It comes in, I believe, as part of the Java platform for the ads you support.

 

Knock it out, or I suspect you will simply lose a lot of subs.

 

 

[BlackBetsy]

You REALLY need to think about whether you want to do business with 180:

 

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/?cat=8&paged=3

 

You can read that for starters. They've been sued multiple times, including by the Government for running spyware programs.

 

The money isn't worth the trouble, guys.

[witesoxfan]

^^^

 

this big time...I've had to clean my computer 5 straight nights now because of it, which means spending 1-2 hours in Safe Mode every night cleaning out my quarantine, checking my computer for viruses, and updating my virus definitions every night. It's a huge pain in the ass.

 

I'd say get rid of it ASAP.

[Heads22]

Jason and kap have been notified. I don't know how to fix that stuff.

[santo=dorf]

I knew this site was a problem. I'll let you guys know I dropped the $70 to upgrade to Norton 360 just because I was sick of seeing the same damn thing.

[BlackBetsy]

I knew this site was a problem. I'll let you guys know I dropped the $70 to upgrade to Norton 360 just because I was sick of seeing the same damn thing.

There are good suggestions at SouthSideSox for Firefox users under the thread I started. I figured I would warn there b/c there is a good amount of crossover from this site.

[Texsox]

From what I was reading the problems are at *their* site, not from the ads. You shouldn't have a problem from the ad being displayed. Until Jas can get to it, if you are not clicking on the ad, you should not be infected.

[Texsox]

I knew this site was a problem. I'll let you guys know I dropped the $70 to upgrade to Norton 360 just because I was sick of seeing the same damn thing.

 

If you didn't click on the ad, you should not have had a problem. All of the complaints I found was at their web site and from downloading software.

[Texsox]

Link, nothing like this here.

[Texsox]

Linked

 

When you run your spyware program, it would show up as n-Case or Zango if you were hit with their spyware.

[BlackBetsy]

If you didn't click on the ad, you should not have had a problem. All of the complaints I found was at their web site and from downloading software.

Do you think I actually clicked on the ad? No way. There is a script running on the page because of the ad. If you run No Script on Firefox, you'll see that the page tries to run "About:Blank" - do a search on that and see what you come up with.

 

This is bad, bad malware. I think not only should Soxtalk take down this ad, but should also donate whatever money they got from those bastards to the makers of Super AntiSpyware and Spybot. I'm serious. It's the Internet version of blood money and can't be kept.

[Texsox]

Do you think I actually clicked on the ad? No way. There is a script running on the page because of the ad. If you run No Script on Firefox, you'll see that the page tries to run "About:Blank" - do a search on that and see what you come up with.

 

This is bad, bad malware. I think not only should Soxtalk take down this ad, but should also donate whatever money they got from those bastards to the makers of Super AntiSpyware and Spybot. I'm serious. It's the Internet version of blood money and can't be kept.

 

 

 

 

Got it, thank you.

[Steve9347]

From what I was reading the problems are at *their* site, not from the ads. You shouldn't have a problem from the ad being displayed. Until Jas can get to it, if you are not clicking on the ad, you should not be infected.

Or if you use a Mac.

[Texsox]

We believe we dumped everything that was the problem.

[kapkomet]

Or we will soon... the 180ad is the problem.

[kapkomet]

We took it down.

 

I do appreciate people letting us know. It never was a problem on my machine, but apparently if you have your activeX controls set a little different, you could have ran into problems. We apologize to everyone who had an issue and would like to encourage anyone to let us know in the future if there's problems like this again.

[BlackBetsy]

We took it down.

 

I do appreciate people letting us know. It never was a problem on my machine, but apparently if you have your activeX controls set a little different, you could have ran into problems. We apologize to everyone who had an issue and would like to encourage anyone to let us know in the future if there's problems like this again.

I appreciate your response on this, but I do think that as penance for dealing with 180, Soxtalk should make a donation of at least a portion of the funds it got from that banner ad to an anti-spyware software company like Super AntiSpyware or Spybot, etc. Think of it as buying some karma. I spent 12-16 hours this weekend on this, and other people probably did, too.

[Palehosefan]

So, the tiny amount of revenue that is generated from ads should be donated by the guys that have put their own time and money into this site for all of us fans to enjoy should be given away? The only people that would have had problems with this are the people that don't have active-x controls blocked.

 

Jason, Kap, and the others have put their own time and money into countless server costs, message board upgrades, etc over the years to keep this site up and running. They only recently started going to non-intrusive advertisements to make a tiny amount of cash to help the upkeep. This was one malicious company that fooled a lot of advertisees into running their ads.

[BlackBetsy]

So, the tiny amount of revenue that is generated from ads should be donated by the guys that have put their own time and money into this site for all of us fans to enjoy should be given away? The only people that would have had problems with this are the people that don't have active-x controls blocked.

 

Jason, Kap, and the others have put their own time and money into countless server costs, message board upgrades, etc over the years to keep this site up and running. They only recently started going to non-intrusive advertisements to make a tiny amount of cash to help the upkeep. This was one malicious company that fooled a lot of advertisees into running their ads.

I appreciate their efforts, and appreciate that they need to defray costs. If they want to run a sponsorship drive, I may very well donate. I'm just saying it's the internet form of blood money, and it's bad karma to keep it.

[kapkomet]

I hear your point, BB. I can tell you that this ad hasn't been up too long at all (I think maybe since about Dec 7 or so)... I doubt that we made much at all off of that, if any... but point taken nonetheless.

[Steve9347]

I appreciate your response on this, but I do think that as penance for dealing with 180, Soxtalk should make a donation of at least a portion of the funds it got from that banner ad to an anti-spyware software company like Super AntiSpyware or Spybot, etc. Think of it as buying some karma. I spent 12-16 hours this weekend on this, and other people probably did, too.

I completely disagree. These guys work their asses off for this site. That ad was not placed with any malice or ill-will. Once notified they took care of the issue promptly.

[EvilMonkey]

I wondered why my computer at home has been doing wierd thngs the last few days. Glad you guys are on top of it.

[Chisoxfn]

I want to quickly state that I am the one responsible for such ad. We are not involved with 180, but I am involved with a large advertising company on the web which helps sell one ad on top of our site (and than on the bottom of the site) and they have been coming to us with various promotions throughout the year. In this case the promotion related to 180 and the ad was hosted through the standard site.

 

The issue was that this ad was using the

 

I do my personal best to keep ads from being invasive (most of our ads are on the footer portion of the site, which is a spot where few people see as it keeps the key stuff, Sox news more towards the top). In fact, aside from the graphic ad about the only advertisements on the top are related to tickets and the reason for that is because I consider that semi-relevant to Sox fans (since plenty people here are ocassionally in the market for tough tickets to the Bears/Bulls/Sox).

 

We obviously have pulled the ad (and I will never do anything associated with 180) but I have also got in contact with the large ad company I use (it is one of the larger one's on the web) and have informed them of such problem and I hope they personally use there power (as they are massive and can hit the company in the wallets, something Soxtalk can't do) to prevent such an issue to happening to other people (not just Soxtalk people but anyone else who happens to be running such an ad).

 

Once again I apologize for such instance and I want to remind anyone, if for some reason you are getting something to run a script when you enter our site, always click no. We never use intrusive software of any sort and none of the applications on the site will require such.