Do I Have A Virus Or Does ST Have New Ads?

[MushyMushy 3,618]

I don't suppose that "badware" ad or banner looks like this...

Hidden Content

This is starting to get out of hand at a fast pace...

 

That's the page that was showing up for me, yes. Quite a pain.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Thanks everyone for reporting, we'll investigate this.

It's a possibility the cause is a topic-specific advertisement, which may show when you're not signed in.

We'll keep you posted.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

For some reason unbeknownst to me, this site is now flagged as an attack site.  I got blocked when trying to access one of my own posts.  Something or somebody has done evil.

[SharkSark 397]

In the afternoon when I tried accessing simtropolis I saw some pretty inappropriate advertisements on the forums. And, I guess every one of you should scan your PC's  at least once cause I found 4 viruses. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Whatever is going on, when I login I get an attack site warning whenever I try to access a forum, initially.  Overriding it one time holds for the rest of the session.  It might be worthwhile to track the miscreant(s) and at least publish their misdeeds.

EDIT:  I ran a full virus scan on my account (the O/S has its own protection) and found five false positives.  Four of them were NAM compressed files.  The other was an old *.dll that I've had for years.

  Edited August 19, 2015 by A Nonny Moose  
Follow up.

[citycowboy 183]

OMG, that's what happeened to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[gviper 922]

StopBadaware; no respect for organizations or the people behind them that go about attacking a malicious problem by being malicious and obnoxious themselves. (If this is indeed what's going on here)...

  Edited August 20, 2015 by gviper  

[Nesral Sredna 62]

StopBadaware; no respect for organizations or the people behind them that go about attacking a malicious problem by being malicious and obnoxious themselves. (If this is indeed what's going on here)...

This morning I fired up my long forgotten. IE browser, to see how Simtropolis behaved without an adblocker. Everytime I try read a topic, within two seconds I get forcedirected away from the forum to advertisements for scams like how to earn Money from home, 18+ Internetcasinos, Online paygames and et cetera. You dont want these ads in your email do you, so why forcedirect away guests trying to read a forum? It's not the way to invite people to register, is it? 

The administrators have been aware of the problem for over a year, since I first contacted them when ISPs started blocking Simtropolis, so It's not something they havent had time to "investigate" and fix to a less userhostile addvertisementservice either...

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Googletranslated report from https://www.google.com/safebrowsing :

Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic

What is the current listing status for community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic?
Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 5 time (s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 618 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, resulted 63 page (s) in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2015-08-19, and the last time it was found suspicious content on the site, was the 2015-08-17.
This site was on 2 networks including AS13335 (CLOUDFLARENET), AS15169 (GOOGLE).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
It does not look that community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic has served as an intermediary for the infection of any sites during the past 90 days.

Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

What is the reason?
In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

Next step:
Return to the previous page.
If you are the owner of this website, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. For more information about the review process is available in Google's Webmaster.

  Edited August 20, 2015 by Nesral Sredna  

[Terring 6,476]

I'm using Opera with Adblock Plus and still no problem for me.

[Xander Dax 310]

Well i am having the same problem now as well with this "badware" showing up, it's a real pain i am also getting the "attack page" showing whenever i try to access parts of the forums.

I agree this i really starting to get out of hand, hope the admins can get this all fixed and sorted out soon.

[MushyMushy 3,618]

Curiously, the alert messages have stopped for me (as well as the "badware" thing). They only happened for a day or two. Since then it's been fine. When I was browsing on my phone, though (logged in), I think I saw that some people signatures had been replaced by ads. Since one cannot have an adblocker on a phone, I'm assuming stuff like that happens to people lacking an adblocker?

[Shelltoe 15]

StopBadaware; no respect for organizations or the people behind them that go about attacking a malicious problem by being malicious and obnoxious themselves. (If this is indeed what's going on here)...

what? because firefox opens their website when they think you just visited a malicious website (which you/we did)?

StopBadware is a nonprofit organization maintaining a blacklist.

if you don't like it don't use any mozilla products cause they have a cooperation for the past 10 years ... check the Wiki article for other companies you might want to stay away from in the future.

 

StopBadware is not the problem, its just pointing it out. they don't care about your respect at all.

 

Curiously, the alert messages have stopped for me (as well as the "badware" thing). They only happened for a day or two. Since then it's been fine. When I was browsing on my phone, though (logged in), I think I saw that some people signatures had been replaced by ads. Since one cannot have an adblocker on a phone, I'm assuming stuff like that happens to people lacking an adblocker?

actually even more services blacklisted the domain.

 

EDIT: btw i'd suggest to update from php 5.3.27 unless you fixed the known vulnerabilities.

  Edited August 20, 2015 by Shelltoe  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The first time you get one of these, first kill the new tab (you don't have to wait for it), second click on the "not an attack site" button.  Gone for the rest of the session.

Admittedly, this is a "work around", but I am sure this nuisance can be abated.

[mrsmartman 200]

Use IE to browse the site. Everything goes fine.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

The site doesn't let me on on Chrome (which I call Chrom), so I'm on Explorer now.  Not the best choice, but when Chrom doesn't let me...

Anyway, I received a full screen notice saying that Simtropolis had Malware.  It doesn't even let me by to the site. 

[Samerton 833]

No longer getting the message on Chrome, seems to have cleared up now.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

As of this login the problem seems to have gone away.  I got an update to firefox earlier today.

[Dirktator 2,327]

Sorry guys, we're actively looking into this and trying to understand what's triggering these warnings or if indeed malware has crept into our server/site and is infecting people. If you have any concrete information please don't hesitate to PM me any details. Will update you once we know what's really going on, thanks for reporting it guys!

NOTE: Please do not post direct links to somewhere that was reported to have malware! Please PM me those links and do not post them publicly in case someone inadvertently clicks them!

[rmjohnson144 42]

Use IE to browse the site. Everything goes fine.

That's very scary. By passing security can be hazardous.

The site doesn't let me on on Chrome (which I call Chrom), so I'm on Explorer now.  Not the best choice, but when Chrom doesn't let me...

Anyway, I received a full screen notice saying that Simtropolis had Malware.  It doesn't even let me by to the site. 

Yikes, not another one.

Chrome will let you in if you read the messages on screen.  I have a secondary computer just for these reasons and all seems fine, although this session lets me in no warnings.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

For the second day in a row, my current (new) version of Firefox 40.0+build4-0ubuntu0.15.04.4 seems to have fixed this problem.  It may very well be some glitch in the Internet protocols since others are reporting this with Chrome.

@Dirktator:  From the persistence, I suspect an Internet wide thing probably caused by some stupidity at a major site such as Google.  Good luck with this.  Some jerks have nothing better to do than spoil things for everyone.

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I no longer have this problem on the version of Firefox cited above.  Does anyone still have this?  If so, on what browsers?

[MushyMushy 3,618]

I haven't had any issues for several days now. Running Firefox version 39.0 on Windows 7.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Everything working right here

[Hellken 1,658]

I am on Firefox 40. It seems to have stopped. At least for now.