World of Tanks
RAMWolff
Posts: 10,249
Hi,
Something that infiltrated my Firefox. At no particular time Firefox will boot itself up and there is this huge page for World of Tanks. I'm not sure what extension or exe I must have gotten this from but from all my searches on my system I can't find it.
On top of it I can't post on the DAZ forums using Firefox. Luckily I copied this text and am posting this via Chrome.
Anyone else have this happen. If so what can I do to remedy this issue?
Thanks so much
Richard
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Comments
I haven't experienced anything like that, but I'd be interested to know if you find out anything more
[Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada. ] ;-)
Run something like MalWareBytes to try and remove whatever you have picked up that is causing this.
Well, here's my mozilla firefox, internet explorer, etc.
were invaded by this initial page (image below)
I can go anywhere, but only starting her
I think all this crap, but when I try to delete it, then both: firefox and internet explorer stop working, so I have to undo the process.
the image below is an example of what I'm talking about (I zoom out to see that you, the links to shops / other sites, forts / etc descend across the page.
[Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada. ] ;-)
Great film! :)
From that description, you've almost definitely got a virus of some sort.
Restart your computer in Safe Mode, update your anti-virus program's files, and run a full system scan - if you have a decent anti-virus program, that should catch the bug. After you've done that, upgrade Firefox to the current version - that should fix the damage the virus did.
If that doesn't work, then I can't suggest anything...
Yea very similar Jorge!! IIRC I did run Malwarebytes but now going to run the Rootkit that Malwarebytes offers to dig deeper.
Thanks Rob.... I'll do that next but FF is up to date.
It may not actually be FF that is the issue, I am guessing that FF is your default browser and that some other process is 'throwing the system' that URL which has a file association with FF. Though why it then does not permit you post here is rather strange. Until you get it sorted out I'd be leery about using FF to visit any site that requires you to enter a password, just in case.
Continue with the use of MBAM, etc., to track this down but also have a stroll through running process and services to see if there are any you are not sure about. If you have Win7 you can, in Task Manager, right-click on a process and select 'Open File Location' which can give you a good idea about the source of the executable. Also running msconfig.exe and looking at the Startup tab may help identify something being loaded at PC startup which you don't want.
Putting my old tech support hat on I'd have to ask what has been installed recently, specifically around the time this started happening, or if a program you do not usually run has been executed of late.
Did you by any chance actually download or install a game called World of Tanks because that is an actual game. In my search, something called Web of Trust was mentioned quite often in relation to viruses. Maybe check your browsers addons, plugins and whatever else that might be installed and see if there is anything with WoT as those or the letters for both the game and Web of Trust.
A simple question before rebooting completely: what is your homepage? I mean taking a look from the control panel? Maybe it can be fixed easily.
Anyway, keep your antivirus up-to-date. Always.
Did you notice that this thread is an old thread.
Not until about half-way through :-s Then skipped to the bottom to see what happened.
Being a local PC fix-it guy I see a lot of virus problems (thankfully on other people's machines, not mine) but my first approach is:
1) Boot to "Safe Mode with Networking"
2a) If networking works then browse to www.MalwareBytes.org and get the latest free version, install, and run a full scan then skip to step 3.
2b) If networking doesn't work, pray to your most relevant god and check the "ControlPanel-->Network&Internet;-->InternetOptions-->Connections-->LAN Settings" to unset any Proxy assignment that the malware may have setup. But if that doesn't work then...
2c) Reset InternetExplorer configuration to "Default"settings. But if that doesn't work...
2d) Consider backing up your important data and prepare yourself for having to rebuild your system, then...
2e) Either take two aspirin and call a PC doctor in the morning or bite the bullet and try one or more of the Microsoft "Repair" options for your machine yourself.
3) If however, you did have a working Network and you did download and run MalwareBytes and it did remove a litany of nasty malware (including "PUP"s that you are not absolutely positive are harmless) then you have a better than even chance of getting back to normal.
4) After getting rid of problems in Safe Mode, reboot to full mode then update (or reinstall & update) your full service anti-virus system and run another full scan.
Unfortunately, sometimes you just lose the game. Rather than tifting at windmills or playing "Whack-a-Mole" till you're old & gray, backup your data and get an expert or consider trying one of the built-in Microsoft "Repair" options. But in the end you may have to take those aspirin and leave your machine in the hands of experts who will often just give up and rebuild back to factory settings and say "Sorry, frontal lobotomy was necessary. $80 please."
Edited to add:
If at step "2a" above, your network doesn't work and if you have access to another computer, you can download the MalwareBytes app onto a CD* or memory stick and get it into your computer that way. You won't have access to the absolute newest malware definitions but it's better than nothing and may get your network working enough to update the malware definitions and re-scan.
* CD -- How quaint! Does anybody still use CDs as a data transfer mechanism except on museum computers?
Going completely off-topic here but I was watching the old 1970s TV show "Mission Impossible" last night and noticed their tiny tape recorder that I know held probably no more than 15 minutes of voice data. The recorder was about the size of a paperback book and high tech for its day. I have my entire adult life's (50 years) collection of music (~100GB) on a memory chip the size of an aspirin and the thickness of a couple pieces of paper, and play it with a device the size of a large pack of gum. Ain't science wonderful? A testament to the accuracy of Quantum Theory.
LOL
My first instinct on seeing the title was to say, "You're very welcome!"
Hey.... I still do. For stuff I'm giving away, like pictures or as a hard copy of a small model... Otherwise it's DVDs.
At least it's not floppy disks or Zip disks.
I worked for a think-tank for many years and we had an open-house where friends and family could be invited to view the campus and lab facilities to see the unclassified stuff we did. I put together a display of computer industry improvements in magnetic data storage media. At the time (late 80s), the 4GB video type 8mm data tape was leading edge technology so I had a single 4GB tape then next to it I had small pile of 1/4 inch data tape cartridges totaling 4GB. Then next to that were three or four increasingly higher piles of 9-track 1/2 inch 2400 foot long tape reels of decreasing storage density each pile totaling 4GB and the tallest nearly reaching the ceiling. At the end of the display was a tall pile of old 7-track 200bpi tape reels (all we had) with an arrow on the top and a sign that said this pile would extend through the roof of the building two floors up. I got more comments on that silly little display than all the flashing lights and color boob tubes in the computer lab.
Now days your kids get 4GB thumb-drives as booby prizes at a birthday party or in boxes of Cracker-Jacks. And don't use them because they're too small! 8-s (I exaggerate, but not much.)
Through most of the 80's and part of the 90's I worked for a company that was a customer of the outfit I work for now. Small world. Back then, all the product documentation was physically shipped in 9x7 mini binders. A lot of them. As the power user of that software I had to stuff all the updates into those binders. At one point, that company decided to migrate all their doc shipments to CD. They got a lot of push back from the old-timers at some sites. At one of their user conferences, they made the comparison dramatic. They had TWO 6 foot tall by 7 foot wide bookcases FILLED with these binders, each one different. It was their entire collection. On top of the bookcases there was ONE CD in a jewel case. 'Nuff said. They even provided each site with a CD-ROM reader so it could be mounted on the network. Talk about saving some trees!
...shoot, I can get a 128GB (48 GB bigger than the original HDD that my notebook had when I first purchased it) for under 50$
Today 32GB Flash drives are almost as cheap as what I paid for my first 4GB ones.
When I was in college (about 1968) one of the guys in the dorm had a core memory module from some computer sitting on his bookshelf. It was 1Kb (Kilobit) of core memory and about the size of four volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (for those of you who remember what an encyclopedia was). The individual cores were about the size of baby aspirin, huge in comparison to the final generation of core memories which had nearly microscopic cores.
We've drifted completely off topic but it's always fun for geezers to relive the glory days. Getting back to magnetic storage, the first 1GB hard drive I ever worked with (mid 80s) was about the size of a baby casket (and that's what we called it), 19"x24"x10", weighed about 100 pounds and cost $10,000. We had two of them! Made by Seagate.
About 1970 I worked for the college (Florida Institute of Technology) and we had an (XDS) Xerox Data Systems; Sigma 5 computer. Actually it was an SDS design but the SDS company had been recently bought by Xerox. Their hard drive was called a RAD (Random Access Disk). It had a huge heavy platter arranged vertically with a thick central hub. If I remember correctly, it didn't have a moving arm with a read/record head, it had a read/record head for every track on the platter. It could only hold a few megabytes of data. The heavy platter took quite a while to start up and you could tell by the whine when it was about ready to blink green. When you pressed the stop button to turn it off, brake shoes clamped down on the central hub and the platter stopped in 1/4 rotation. THUNK!!! and the top of the 5 foot equipment rack jolted to the side noticeably. You learned not to set fragile objects on top of that rack. See picture below.
When working for the college I used to talk to one of the women in the department who worked on the old IBM 2nd generation machines and how they used to have to program using patch boards.
Ah, the good old days, when computers were solid and touchable and massive. There's a reason they were called "big iron".
Oh, damn this is fun. I remember hearing my first digitally recorded music on that old Xerox Sigma 5. One of the guys in the computer room discovered that there was some analog to digital conversion facility in the computer. He rigged up something that permitted him to play a record (you know flat vinyl platter with wiggly grooves) into the converter and digitize it. Storing it was a problem. Not enough core memory and we couldn't use the RAD because it was nearly full of system programming. But we did have 9-track magnetic tape. He configured the tape drive to not write in discrete finite length records but to record digital data on the tape continuously in one immensly long record. At that speed the entire 2400 foot reel only lasted for a couple minutes. But when he read the digital data back and piped it to the tiny 2 inch beep speaker on the console panel by pulsing the beep speaker in step with the digital data values, we could hear crude music. That was about 1971. I think we were about as pleased with ourselves as Edison was when he got the wiggly grooves on a cylinder thing to work.
Remember these 8-inch disk drive with diskette (3½-inch disk for comparison)
Probably still being used in Government
I started out at Purdue in 1967 - second shift weekend computer operator; paid about $1.40 an hour - and an account code with a 5 minute/50 page limit, good on all the student batch processing runs. We had an IBM 7094-II - and the 32K words (36 bit) of core memory were behind a glass panel about 8 inches high and 30 inches long, at my eye level (about 65 inches) in the box of transistors and power supplies that drove it.
Fast forward to 1974-75 and I'm a makee-learn systems programmer on a Burroughs medium system (B2500) with 250 K of memory and a head-per-track disk unit with 100 MB of storage. In a 5-bay box that was 4 foot tall, 4 foot deep, and something over 12 feet long. Each set of 4 platters was in a separate box with a 220 volt 3-phase 2 hp electric motor to spin them. I had 9 interactive terminals doing on-line processing on that system - 4 order entry, 3 for billing, and 2 for programming. All running under Burroughs' MCP-V (pronounced Master Control Program Five).
And now I'm sitting at a single-user system with 64 GB memory and 4.5 TB of installed disk - and another 4 TB of external disk for backups. And every now and then I think back to those simpler times . . .
Looking at that 8 inch disk drive, I think back on the days when (not all that long ago) when I'd always be scavenging parts from devices.
I was always making little gizmos and fixing stuff, so when devices went bad, I'd strip them of their "cool" parts... Gears, wheels, tracks, brackets, screws, connectors,switches, indicators lights, motors... I think you get the idea...
A lot of it was dead scientific/medical equipment, but a lot was also normal, but not so common consumer stuff.
Now most stuff is so crapified that even when someone I know has some big old device (old can be two-three years) it's not even worth taking apart, as the effort only gives you a handful of screws and maybe some brackets. Everything is boards and flimsy plastic... I'm starting to see Styrene or polyethylene plastic parts in stuff, as opposed to nylon or ABS now...
I've got a Zip Drive. Two of 'em in fact. A 100 and a 250 and several removable disks of each type. 8-O
I even have a couple of machines still with parallel ports and an OS old enough to run the drivers. However, the Zip Drives are safely packed in their boxes awaiting the paniced call from some ancient geek who desperately needs to find an address list or bank records locked away on an archived Zip Disk.
I also have a couple of functioning 3.5" disk drives & disks, but no 5.25" or 8" drives or disks. And I long ago euthanized my DOS and Win95 systems. :-(
Yeah, remember when keyboard keys were molded 2-color plastic where the letters were different color plastic than the button itself, not just glued on stickers?
My brother got a new desktop computer last year. While helping him I had to open it for some reason or another and discovered that it was nothing more than a laptop motherboard mounted in a desktop box. It had full size DVD drive and 1TB hard drive, and some USB ports but no expansion slots and no power supply, it had a laptop external power cord with transformer/rectifier. It did however have 8GB RAM and a 2.0GHz low power I3 processor. Perfectly adequate for his needs and it fit his budget.
Remember when the console input was an IBM Selectric typewriter with the ball? Or earlier still, remember when console input was an ASR-33 or 35 teletype with yellow paper roll? Remember when computers were actually shut down at night to save electricity and reduce wear on the moving parts? Remember when you had to boot the machine by flipping a set of 16 or 32 register switches repeatedly to enter a several instruction boot program to perform a cold start in the morning? Remember the printer that sounded like a red hot machine gun and you needed to wear noise suppressor earwear to approach? Remember boxes of fan-fold paper behind the high speed printer that invariably refused to fold properly and dump a thousand sheets onto the floor outside the box when you were out of the room to get a cup of coffee? Remember the ban on coffee in the computer room and the dried coffee stains on the cement under the false floor that you forgot to surreptitiously clean up?
...or the box of punch cards arranged in sequence that you carefully carried from the keypunch room to the card reader, making sure you didn't bump into anything or anyone along the way.
Still one of the loudest shrieks I have ever heard in RL to this day.
The 7094-II had an old 402 tab machine printer that did about 30 lines per minute on a good day - if we flipped sense-switch 6 it would list the job cards as the jobs were read in off of tape. We didn't use it often, because most jobs ran in less than 2 seconds. We also had 50 or so 1-card boot cards in the 72 card per minute reader; when it locked up, we'd hit the IPL button, it would inhale one card and be open for business in about a minute.
We also had a Control Data 6500 with dual 10 inch crts for the console; Purdue was helping finalize the OS and someone on the team had too much time on their hands. When the system hung the I/O queues on the left scope and the process display on the right scope would blank. Then, scrolling from the left to the right on the left scope the word 'dead' would roll in - and on the right scope, from the right, the word 'start'. Then they'd blank - and 'dead' would scroll up from the bottom, while 'start' dropped down from the top on the right. Then both scopes would blank and flash the words. Mind, these were big block words that took up the entire scope; in addition, a sonalert was supposed to be sounding, but the CE's cut the wires to it on the second day of power up.
Then I spent 6 years on a 360/30 with the 1050 Selectric console (big rectangular box). The company was one of the first to take advantage of the consent decree IBM signed and purchased the system. Anyway, as time went on, that 1050 got sloppier and sloppier from wear and our CE would come in with the odd spring, cog, or gear - each with a big red tag 'Inventory Item: Replaced Component Must Be Returned". After two years of this, we got a part drop-shipped in; when the CE opened it he pulled out the complete mechanical assembly for a 1050 - said it took him 5 months to dig out the part number. And - wonder of wonders - no red tag.
The Burroughs system had an ASR-33 as the console, called a 'spo' - that was the assembler instruction that printed the text on it. As near as I could ever determine, looking through all available Burroughs literature on site, I had to conclude that 'spo' was an abbreviation for 'supervisor print out'. One of my tricks as a programmer to get the operator's attention to an error message (remember when we used to do those) was to prefix the message with a sequence of nulls (made the mechanism 'quiver' in place), upper case/lower case characters (bounced the type drum up and down, with no horizontal movement) and bell characters (rang the bell) - so dingdingmessage.
The operators really hated my error messages. :-)
The CDC 6500 had a card reader that worked at two speeds - 2,000 cards per minute or 4,000 cards per minute. Two horizontal trays, one feed, one output, both of which held 4,000 cards (two boxes). The read mechanism was photo-electric; a vacuum would pull the lead card against 5 (stacked) perforated horizontal belts, past the photocell assembly, around two right-angle turns, and into the output tray. Every now and then a card going to the output would catch the edge of the previous card in the tray - and before you could stop the silly thing you would have two hundred or so tightly rolled cards bunched in the output. Now THAT caused screams when the (mostly CS Grad) students got the result back.
...I can imagine. Hundreds of crumpled now useless cards which would need to be keypunched again would be enough to make anyone cry.
That person who dropped the box just gathered them up, tossed them in a rubbish bin and went back to the keypunch room rather than try to resort all 2,000 cards in sequence by hand.
Did anybody ever make spare cash keypunching for the jocks and others who couldn't type? That was back in the mid 60s when Typing was a girl's class, like Home Economics. My mother forced me to learn to type at home one summer in High School. She bought me a book on self-learning how to type, and sat me in front of her 1930's era black Royal typewriter that weighed about 50 pounds and took 5 pounds of finger pressure to make the keys hit the page, I exaggerate, but not much. and said "You're going to learn to type and that's that"! 8-o So I learned to type. For which I have been forever grateful.
...raises hand.
Even after computing progressed from punched cards, continued to make good of money typing essays and term papers.
First on Sage IIs which ran their own "text processor system" called Word/7 (nothing to do with MS) which makes even the latest version of MS Word look elegant in comparison (in spite of that ridiculous ribbon concept). One actually had to embed special formatting codes (called "Dot Codes") into the document body for the printer. We had two Okidata "letter quality" tractor feed line printers connected to the Sage II lab and from which one had to send a document to a separate queue for printing. Needless to say printing documents was not very economical from a paper resource management aspect as it often involved a fair amount of trial and error until pagination and margins lined up correctly. Some of the dot codes also left an extra blank space in the printed document. For spell checking, you just had to trust your eyes although there was a a third party spell check programme available.
Finally there were the first DOS PCs that ran Wordstar and early versions of Word Perfect, a welcome relief as they included on screen formatting, spell checking, and Word Perfect 4.2 introduced the first printer drivers (no more format coding and setting printer configurations for each job) including one for the newfangled HP laser printers the lab got. Of course we always ran test drafts on the Okidatas first to make sure everything looked good as access to the laser printers had to scheduled and there was a per page fee to use them (which of course I passed along in my price).