Virus Attack?

[Hrothgar]

I was searching for the address to the Goshen County fair in Ct. I clicked on a site and got a pop-up warning about a malware virus attack. I hit cancel, and got a window that looked like a PC "My Computer" page, and it showed that some scan was going on. According to the "report" I had a bunch of trojans, etc. I'm guessing this all was bunk. But the site downloaded 4 .exe files to my computer. I think the site was "advancedpcscanning" .com or something.

I know the Apple party line is that Mac's don't get viruses, but is there any way I can check that my computer hasn't been infected by anything?

(I do have vmware fusion on the computer, but it wasn't running at the time.)

 

[cal6n]

What you found is a fairly sophisticated scam. It's a website designed to mimic a windows programme.

There's a good analysis of this type of scam here.

All of the "operations" it does just call up other windows but they're all just pictures designed to play on the PC user's natural (and healthy) paranoia of Windows.

The fact that these "warnings" look like PC windows should tell you that they're nothing to do with your Mac. Your Mac is your friend and it will always communicate with you like a Mac, in a friendly, polite manner. anything else is a lie.

The files you downloaded are only able to run under windows, so you can just delete them. That's the good news. The bad news is that if you had done this on a PC, then you would now be running a piece of crapware under the impression that it was helping you. It would "try" to clean your system, but eventually you would "have to" upgrade to the pro version and then they'd have your credit-card details.

 

[r.j.s]

You're fine.

That was an ad that apparently also downloaded the spyware for you. Your computer wasn't scanned - it was just trying to trick you.

 

[Infrared]

I was searching for the address to the Goshen County fair in Ct. I clicked on a site and got a pop-up warning about a malware virus attack. I hit cancel, and got a window that looked like a PC "My Computer" page, and it showed that some scan was going on. According to the "report" I had a bunch of trojans, etc. I'm guessing this all was bunk. But the site downloaded 4 .exe files to my computer. I think the site was "advancedpcscanning" .com or something.

I know the Apple party line is that Mac's don't get viruses, but is there any way I can check that my computer hasn't been infected by anything?

(I do have vmware fusion on the computer, but it wasn't running at the time.)

Were you using Safari?

Sounds like the carpet-bombing attack noted here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/15/apple_safari_carpet_bombing_vuln/

 

[Hrothgar]

Thanks. I figured the "scanning" was fake, but I was concerned about the downloads. I did delete them and empty the trash.

Happy Labor Day.

 

[iPhone 62S]

Just a flashy web page, nothing to worry about.

To prevent things like this in the future, you can use NoScript with Firefox.