iPod touch problem: Safari appears to be hijacked.

[hemophilia]

Using safari, going to certain websites automatically redirects me to a different page. Certain google queries are being redirected or completely blocked as well.

I tried doing a restore and it did nothing.

I have a 2nd gen iPod touch with 3.1 firmware. I haven't jailbroken it or anything, trying these same queries on any other computer/mobile device doesn't do this.

Does anybody have any idea what I can do?

 

[markojug]

Can you tell us what some of the websites might be?

It did this on my old windows PC. Turns out I had to install Windows all over again.

 

[hemophilia]

Unfortunately nothing I could link or mention here, but what I generally considered to be malware-free websites. I've had this sort of problem on my PC before, and a format fixed it, but as I mentioned earlier a restore to the ipod touch didn't fix it, and now my ipod is having trouble syncing apps and won't restore anymore :-\

 

[TraceyS/FL]

Ignoring the content of the sites... Is there anyway they could be falling under the new anti-fishing thing in 3.1? Someone running open dns against your router? Google safe search on? Can a computer on the same net get these places?

 

[hemophilia]

I'm fairly certain this is malware.

Other computers on the network can reach these destinations just fine. I wouldn't complain too much and just move on normally, but the redirect is getting in the way of normal web surfing. Google is practically worthless and a good 50% of the websites I attempt to visit are being redirected to porn sites that don't even offer good content :-\

 

[TraceyS/FL]

Can you download a fresh firmware and start over?

On the other hand, despite it being porn (i'm assuming it is), i'm pretty sure that Apple would like to KNOW about possible malware on the touch. I have no clue where to tell you to submit it too..... really, i'm just an innocent soccer mom here! (that was a former system admin)

But i'd download the firmware and start over and see what happens..... you know its the device so go from there.

burn your current backup files to a disk though to preserve them though, in case seriously, anyone wants to poke thru them.

 

[tratclif]

If this were a Windows machine I was working on, I'd check the DNS servers and hosts file. I had to google on where to find the DNS servers on an iPod Touch or iPhone -- in settings, select Wifi, then click the blue edit arrow on the right. Normally, you get the DNS server numbers from the router by DHCP.

That may not help you much if you're not a techie.

 

[Consultant]

LOL. Let me guess. Questionable sites (porn)

Do you know questionable sites and newbies don't mix?

 

[hemophilia]

lol, I am really not a newbie. Here? Yeah. With Apple products? Yeah, but I'm not a noob to the interweb tubes by any stretch of the imagination.

I checked the DNS information and it points to my router, so I don't think it's that. As I said earlier, other machines on the network aren't doing this. I've been to these websites on secured and unsecured windows machines and *never* had any problems or alarm bells going off.

I tried pointing the ipod touch at the actual DNS instead of the router, which did nothing.

Is there a way to dig into the host files or anything without jailbreaking the ipod?