ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

I don't know where else to put this, so I'll put it here. Earlier today I went to download a free WinRAR that was listed on CNET. It was a virus from hell instead!! What happens is when you click on the link, you get a page that looks legit! It even has a picture of a WinRAR program box! But when you click on the download button you load a virus/trojan into your system! It continually pops up a box telling you that you are infected. When you try to close the box, you are taken straight to a website called "ANTIVIRUS2008". This happened to my brother's system, too! YOU CANNOT GET RID OF THIS THING! THE HARDER YOU TRY, THE DEEPER IT DIGS ITSELF IN! The only way to get rid of it is with a complete system wipe. On my brother's system, I had to use my copy of Avanquest's SystemSuite 7 and do the government spec 'secure erase"!. With my laptop, I was lucky enough to be able to do a standard system recovery. However, it is still a lot of work!!! That's why I thought I would give everyone a heads up about this!! PLEASE! PLEASE! SPREAD THE WORD!!

Reply 1 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-12543_102-0.html?forumID=141&threadID=297219&messageID=2788067

Post 1 states

you can then report the incident to download.com customer support by clicking here.

Please report it there.


Rick

Reply 2 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

Did you download WinRAR from download.com at http://www.download.com/WinRAR/3000-2250_4-10007677.html or did you click on another link on download.com (possibly an advertisement) and download WinRAR from another website? That's a key distinction to determine where the problem lies.

Let us know.
John

Reply 3 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

i entered "WinRAR" in the searchbar and then under "sponsered matches" i clicked on this link: "Free Win Rar 3.82
Visit Web Site Last Official Version Of WinRar Download Free WinRar Now". the URL is: gperavguslive.info

Message was edited by: admin to disable URL

Reply 4 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

The "Sponsored Matches" are actually provided by Google, and while Cnet has filters in place the ads are not individually reviewed by Cnet staff. Hopefully that one and those similar will be removed soon, but others will undoubtedly slip through in the future. Thus, I would recommend ignoring/avoiding the 'sponsored results' on Cnet websites and elsewhere (including Yahoo, MSN, etc). Personally, I use the Firefox extension AdBlock Plus to remove all iFrames for googlesyndication.com, and similar options are available for other browsers, to avid the accidental reliance on such ads.

Regards,
John

Reply 5 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

A big thank you to you. That is information that i will rememmber in the future. I know that it sounds a little naive, but I actually thought it would be safe as I have never had any problems before this one. CNRT has been a good site to work with.

Reply 6 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

Wow, that was a quick turn around time for removal after I had the team check into it. Anyways it's gone now.


Thanks!
-Lee

Reply 7 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

I just got that virus and it keeps taking me to google the taking me to an asian tech school site then a debt resolution center i made a big mistake by trying to download that winrar can someone please help me! just post here, thanks

Message was edited by: admin to remove email address to prevent spam harvesters from picking it up

Reply 8 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=302475&messageID=2819623&tag=forums06;posts#2819623

Be sure to read the whole thread before proceeding.

By the way, please do not post your email address in these forums, or in 'any' forums for that matter. Forum bots, (robots), regularly trawl forum posts for email addresses so they can be spammed. You have enough problems with this virus. Don't make it worse.

I have asked the Forum Admin to remove your email address.

Mark

Reply 9 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

What ever it is, I got it and it will not let me go to a number of normal sites like google or yahoo. This is true on both Firefox and IE.. I've used Cnet frequently in the past and never had a problem... I am running Windows XP with Norton Antivirus V3 and have used Liveupdate... Nothing stopped it getting in my pc...
I am currently using my Mac to try and find a solution...

Reply 10 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

Not sure which one was causd by the WinRar download. I had it on my last system as well so I decided not to take a chance and had an IT buddy reformat my hard drive; being that this particular virus targets personal information. Anyhow, now I got it on my newly reformatted system. I've ran Norton which caught the backdoor."trojan and AdAware caught a Win32.trojan virus; both supposedly deleted. But being that these viruses embed themselves into the registry, is there any potential of them coming back or staying dorment until retriggered? PLEASE HELP ANYONE! -EXTREMELY FRUSTRATED. THANK YOU

Reply 11 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

in CNET's Security, viruses and spyware forum.

Mark

Reply 12 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

I had the same problem. I also got this product from Download.com and not only does it bring down its own set of virus's, it downloads other software packages that you have to run to clean up the mess it brought down in the first place, at a price. I am still trying to figure out how to get the name "Virus Alert" off my home computer.

Reply 13 : ATTENTION!! DANGER!! VIRUS!!

I tried to get it too and my computer confirmed it as a trojan! Luckily, I got it out.